


twilight - larry au

by kenthedoll



Series: twilight - larry au [1]
Category: One Direction (Band), Twilight (Movies)
Genre: Abuse, Angst, Attempted Murder, Attempted Sexual Assault, Blood Drinking, Bloodletting, Disabled Character(s), F/M, Fluff, Graphic depictions of violence - Freeform, Human Louis Tomlinson, Love Triangle, M/M, Mentions of Suicide, Minor Character Death, Murder, Pathokinesis, Pining, Sexual Situations, Strength, Telepathy, Torture, Unrequited Love, Vampire Harry Styles, Vampires, Werewolves, american!louis, attempted turning, enhanced abilities/powers, precognition/foresight, speed - Freeform, venom draining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-01
Updated: 2020-08-01
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:34:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 11
Words: 24,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25649638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kenthedoll/pseuds/kenthedoll
Summary: Louis Tomlinson moves from his mother's house in sunny Phoenix, Arizona, to live with his father in gloomy Forks, Washington. After beginning his junior year of high school, Louis becomes captivated by Harry Styles, a mysteriously handsome student with a dark secret.Louis inevitably discovers that Harry hails from a family of vampires, known throughout The Pacific Northwest as the Olympic coven. However, Louis is not afraid of Harry's thirst for blood (nor the fact that Harry could kill him at any given moment) because another coven is hunting Louis' irresistible scent, and their leader, James, won't stop until Louis is dead.ORThe Larry version of Stephenie Meyer's 2005 novel "Twilight" and Catherine Hardwicke's 2008 film of the same name.***Written from Louis' point of view.
Relationships: Alice Cullen/Jasper Hale, Des Styles/Anne Twist, Emmett Cullen/Rosalie Hale, Harry Styles/Louis Tomlinson, Niall Horan/Jade Thirlwall, Perrie Edwards/Liam Payne, mentions of past Johannah Deakin/Mark Tomlinson
Series: twilight - larry au [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1859509
Kudos: 36





	1. prologue

**Author's Note:**

> AUTHOR'S NOTE
> 
> THIS STORY IS A DIRECT COPY OF THE MOVIE "TWILIGHT"
> 
> IT HAS BEEN TRANSFERRED FROM MY WATTPAD ACCOUNT (@ ken-the-doll) BECAUSE OF WATTPAD'S INCREASING RESTRICTIONS

**[LOUIS' POV]**

I'd never given much thought to how I would die, but dying in the place of someone I love seemed like a good way to go, so I couldn't bring myself to regret the decision to leave home.

I would miss Phoenix. I'd miss the heat.

I would miss my loving, erratic, harebrained mother, Johannah... _and_ her new husband, Dan... but they'd been planning to travel together, so I was going to be flying out to live with my dad, and I figured it would be a good thing.

In the state of Washington, under a near constant cover of clouds and rain, there's a small town named Forks. Population: 3,120 people. This was where I was moving.

My dad, Mark, was the chief of police.

"Your hair is longer," he pointed out my fringe on the way back to his--and now _our_ \--house.

"I cut it since the last time I saw you," I told him from where I sat, holding onto a tiny, potted cactus from my mother's garden, in the passenger seat of his cruiser.

His statement left me momentarily reminiscing about the days when I used to push my hair up and out of my face with a bit of styling gel. It was mainly to avoid any excess sweating beneath the heat of the Arizona sun, but I figured that wouldn't be much of a problem here in Washington.

"Ah," Mark replied with a flat expression, as he was clearly not accustomed to small talk, which was pretty understandable, considering the fact that he lived alone, as well as how long it had been since I'd seen him last. "Guess it grew out again."

I used to spend two weeks here, almost every summer since my parents' divorce, but it had been years.

"I've cleared some shelves off in the bathroom," he told me once we'd finally arrived, and he'd unlocked the house and followed me inside.

"Oh, right," I nodded upon remembering there was only, "one bathroom."

Nothing ever seemed to change whenever I'd come here, no matter how long it'd been. This was evident in the way my bedroom upstairs had remained virtually untouched.

Everything was almost exactly as I had left it. _Almost_.

"It's a pretty good work lamp," Mark thought aloud when he switched on a new lamp on my desk and I moved to set my cactus beside it. "The sales lady picked out the bed stuff," he gestured toward a fresh set of violet sheets and pillows on my bed; One of the only things that had really changed. "You like purple, right?" he asked me.

"Purple's cool," I nodded. "Thanks."

"Okay," he nodded as well, and after a few moments of seemingly awkward silence, he left me to it.

One of the best things about Mark? He didn't hover.

There was a car honking in the driveway a moment later, so I moved to the window to observe an orange pickup truck that pulled up to the house. Then two of my favorite people in the world emerged from the inside; My childhood best friend, Jacob Black, and his father, Billy.

"Heard you guys comin' all the way down the road," Mark hummed when he greeted them both with a firm handshake.

"Good to see you," Billy told him just as I made my way out front.

"Louis, you remember Billy Black," Mark stepped aside to allow me to say hello.

"Yeah," I smiled down at the long-haired man that I hadn't seen since the last time I'd visited Forks. "Wow, you're lookin' good," I leaned down to shake his hand and he smiled brightly from where he was sat upon his wheelchair.

"Well, I'm still dancin'," Billy chuckled and proceeded to snap his fingers to an imaginary tune. "I'm glad you're finally here," he told me. "Mark here hasn't shut up about it since you told him you were coming."

"Alright. Keep exaggerating and I'll roll you into the mud," Mark joked with his close friend as Jacob and I shared an amused laugh about it.

"After I ram you in the ankles," Billy turned his chair to chase Mark around the truck, leaving Jacob and I to finally speak amongst ourselves.

"Hi, I'm... I'm Jacob," he told me with a timid smile, as if I didn't remember who he was. "We used to make mud pies when we were little."

"Right. No, I remember," I assured him before glancing back at our fathers who had been play-fighting in the empty street. "Are they always like this?"

"It's getting worse with old age," Jacob shook his head.

"So? What do you think?" Mark patted the side of the orange pickup once he and Billy had joined us again.

"Of what?" I asked.

"Your homecoming present," Mark answered with a smirk.

"This?" my brows raised when I glanced back at the truck.

"Just bought it off Billy here."

"Yep!" Billy confirmed his words with a smile.

"I totally rebuilt the engine for you," Jacob told me with a proud grin.

"Oh, come on," I shook my head in disbelief, but they were all still smiling back at me, meaning they weren't kidding. "Oh, my gosh! This is _perfect_! Are you _joking_ me?"

I moved to open the driver's side door, just as Jacob had moved to walk around to the passenger side, resulting in me accidentally smacking him in the hip with the door.

"Sorry!" I cringed when he groaned from the slightest bit of pain it caused him, but he continued around to the other side of the truck with a smile, silently assuring me that he was okay.

"I told you he'd love it," Billy smirked at my father as Jacob and I climbed inside the vehicle. "I'm down with the kids."

"Oh, yeah, dude," Mark chuckled sarcastically. "You're the bomb."

"Okay, uh..." Jacob began once our doors were closed. "Listen. You gotta double-pump the clutch when you shift, but besides that, you should be good."

"That's this one?" I asked as I pointed out what I had assumed to be the clutch.

"Yeah. Yeah, right there."

"Alright," I smirked after successfully starting the engine on the first try. "Do you want a ride to school or something?" I offered.

"Oh, I go to school on the reservation," Jacob answered, which didn't come as too much of a surprise to me, considering I'd long been made aware of the fact that he and Billy were Native Americans of the Quileute tribe in La Push.

"Right, right," I nodded. "That's too bad... it would've been nice to know _one_ person."


	2. one

My first day at my new school was in March; The middle of the semester. 

_Great._

"Nice ride," a student told me in the parking lot, having watched my truck backfire before I killed the engine and climbed out of it.

"Thanks," I muttered quietly, as I wasn't entirely sure if he really meant that.

Nevertheless, I pulled my schedule and map of the campus from my bag, and proceeded to search for my classes.

"You're Louis Tomlinson, the new guy," another student smiled when he approached me, with hair of bleach blonde and eyes of cerulean blue. "Hi, I'm Niall, the eyes and ears of this place. Anything you need? Tour guide, lunch date, shoulder to cry on?"

"Uh..." I responded dumbly at first, seemingly unable to find any words since I'd been caught off guard by the boy's sudden presence. "I'm really more of the suffer-in-silence type..."

"Good headline for your feature," Niall's smile only widened upon hearing that. "I'm on the paper and you're news, baby; Front page."

"No, I'm not..." I shook my head at him incredulously, but he just smirked. "You--" I chuckled softly. " _Please_ , don't have any sort of--"

"Whoa, whoa, chillax. No feature," Niall assured me with a shrug.

"Okay, thanks," I nodded.

**\---**

Then later on, in gym, I tried my best to convince the coach to excuse me from their games of volleyball, but to no avail.

Now dressed in a simple t-shirt and sweats, I stood anxiously on the court near one of the servers, and when the ball suddenly came flying toward my face, I instinctively smacked it away, only to send it flying into the back of another student's head.

"Whoa!" the brunette exclaimed in shock before turning around to discern who had hit him.

"I'm sorry!" I timidly approached the taller boy with a deeply apologetic expression, simultaneously leaving my game behind. "I told them not to let me play..."

My hand-eye coordination wasn't exactly the best. I felt that I was much better suited for a sport like soccer.

Any trace of anger was immediately washed from his features upon meeting my gaze. "No, no, no," he quickly shook his head. "That's--Don't--" he briefly laughed to himself for stuttering over his words. "You're Louis, right?"

"Call me Lou."

"Yeah. Hey," he nodded and reached a hand out for me to shake. "I'm, uh--I'm Liam... Payne."

"Nice to meet you," I smiled, and I accepted his handshake, just as one of the girls from the opposite side of the net suddenly joined our conversation.

"He's got a great spike, huh?" the blonde giggled to Liam sarcastically, but I could tell there wasn't any malice behind it. "I'm Perrie, by the way," she smiled at me. "Hey, you're from Arizona, right?"

"Yeah," I nodded.

"Aren't people from Arizona supposed to be, like, _really_ tan?" she gave me a quick once over, appearing slightly taken aback by the fact that my skin was a bit paler than hers.

"Yeah," I pursed my lips to try and distract myself from my own self-deprecating thoughts. It always seemed so hard for people to understand me and I could never seem to figure out why. "Maybe that's why they kicked me out," I shrugged, hoping my joke would suffice as an answer.

It earned a few laughs from the two of them, so I figured I must've been doing something right.

**\---**

"Hey, Liam!" Niall smiled brightly at his friend when Liam & I joined his table at lunch. "You met my homeboy, Louis!"

"Oh, _your_ homeboy?" Liam smirked incredulously at that, while I just laughed quietly to myself at the fact that they were speaking about me like I wasn't sitting literally _right_ between the two of them.

"Yeah," Niall teased his friend.

" _My_ boy!" the student from the parking lot this morning, Tyler Crowley, had suddenly rushed up to our table and unexpectedly pressed a massive kiss to my cheek.

I felt the blood rushing to my face in a blush as a result, just as Tyler yanked Liam's chair right out from under him, allowing Tyler to run away with both a beaming smile and a head start.

"Sorry I had to mess up your game, Liam!" Tyler called back to him once Liam began to playfully chase him around the cafeteria.

"Oh, my God," Perrie shook her head and she easily slid over onto Liam's seat in order to sit beside me. "It's like first grade all over again. You're the shiny new toy," she told me.

"Smile!" another girl chirped as she took Perrie's seat and aimed a camera directly at my face. She snapped a picture, before I could even register what she had said, and I flushed an even deeper shade of red at the sight of the flash.

"Okay..." I chuckled quietly, unable to meet anyone's eyes.

"Sorry," she frowned at my reaction, seeming genuinely apologetic. "I needed a candid for the feature," she explained.

"The feature's dead, Jade," Niall told her. "Don't bring it up again."

"It's okay," I assured her. "I just--"

"I got your back, baby," Niall jokingly patted my shoulder upon standing from his seat to find Liam and Tyler.

"Guess we'll just run another editorial on teen drinking," Jade sighed to herself.

"You know, you could always go for... eating disorders?" I shrugged as I listed off different ideas, "the speedo padding on the swim team...?"

"Actually, that's a good one," Jade smiled at that. "Kirk--"

"Kirk, right?" Perrie said the boy's name at the same time, earning an even wider smile from Jade. "That's exactly what I thought."

"We're talking _Olympic_ size," Jade smirked.

Perrie had replied, but I had become a bit too distracted by a group of students that entered the cafeteria just then.

"Who are they?" I asked curiously, keeping my gaze locked on them rather than blatantly pointing them out.

"The Styles..." Jade answered once she'd discerned who exactly I was asking about.

"They're Dr. and Mrs. Styles' foster kids," Perrie explained to me. "They moved here from England, like, a few years ago."

"They kind of keep to themselves," Jade added.

"Yeah, 'cause they're all _together_ ," Perrie smirked before emphasizing, "like, _together_ , together. The blonde girl? That's Rosalie, and the big dark-haired guy, Emmett? They're, like, a thing. I'm not even sure that's legal."

"Pez, they're not actually related," Jade furrowed her brows at the other girl as I silently studied the unconventional couple.

"Yeah, but they _live_ together. It's _weird_ ," Perrie replied to her before continuing her explanation, "and, okay, the little dark-haired girl's Alice. She's _really_ weird, and she's with Jasper, the blonde one who looks like he's in pain."

I glanced back once the pair had passed our table, and I couldn't help the absentminded smile that crept its way onto my face, as I watched Jasper momentarily twirl Alice in a little circle whilst on their way over to a table of their own.

"Dr. Styles is like this foster dad/matchmaker."

"Maybe he'll adopt me," Jade said jokingly, earning another laugh from Perrie, just as I had spotted a fifth person following along behind the others.

I'd never seen anyone so... _breathtaking..._ in my entire life.

"Who's he?" I asked then, causing both girls to crane their necks to get a better look.

"That's _Harry_ Styles..." Perrie answered. "He's totally gorgeous, _obviously_ , but apparently nobody here's good enough for him. Like I care, you know?" she said quietly, but there was a hint of bitterness laced in her tone.

I glanced back at Harry curiously then.

He was tall, lean, and broad-shouldered, though not quite as broad as Emmett. His curly, chocolate brown hair was swept up and out of his face, revealing two striking brows, and his eyes held shades of golden honey; A trait he seemed to share with his adoptive siblings, oddly enough.

"Seriously, like, don't waste your time," Perrie shook her head, gaining my attention once more.

"I wasn't planning on it," I assured her with a brief, self-deprecating laugh. If what she said was true, and Harry didn't think anyone was good enough for him, I figured I might as well save myself the trouble and simply admire him from afar.

But as I glanced back at him once more to find him staring directly at me, I couldn't bring myself to look away, until he finally did, with an irritated furrow to his brows.


	3. two

"Mr. Molina!" Liam waved to our biology teacher after leading me to the classroom.

"Hey, Liam," the man replied casually before taking note of the fact that I was standing beside him. "Oh, yes. Mr. Tomlinson," he greeted me with a polite smile.

I offered a timid smile in return before glancing around the classroom to get a quick feel for the new environment. Liam was sat in the front row and Niall sat toward the back, but other than that, I hadn't recognized any of the other students. That was until my gaze fell upon the honey-eyed boy from the cafeteria, sitting alone at a table, by the window on the opposite side of the room.

Harry's jaw was set and his fist clenched from where it had been resting casually on the top of the lab table.

I stepped forward a bit in order to retrieve a textbook from Mr. Molina, which simultaneously put me directly before the oscillating fan at the front of the room.

Harry seemed visibly distraught because of it, even going so far as to cover his mouth and nose with his hand, which caused my brows to furrow and my confidence to plummet even further.

Though, come to think of it, if I really smelled _that_ badly, surely Liam or Niall would've already said something... right?

"Welcome to the class," Mr. Molina told me as he placed the textbook in my hands. "Here's your stuff, and I've got a seat for you, right here. It's the last one," he gestured to the only remaining seat in the room; The spot _directly_ next to Harry.

 _Of course_.

"Just follow along 'til you catch up," Mr. Molina added, so I attempted to swallow down my nerves and reluctantly made my way over to my seat in order to sit beside my new lab partner. "Alright, guys, today we're gonna be observing the behavior of planaria AKA flatworms."

He proceeded to hand out little glass jars containing said worms to each of the student pairs.

After our jars had been placed between us on the table, Harry reached out to gently push one of them toward me, before sliding the other toward himself.

I picked up the jar of worms, pretending to study the creatures, but actually took to watching him from my peripheral for a moment. His hand was no longer covering his face, but he seemed as though he was _holding his breath_ , so I slyly turned my head toward my shoulder and sniffed.

I still smelled of my conditioner and deodorant from that morning, so what the hell was his deal?

I looked over at him then because he began to stare, and it could've just been the lighting, but I swear Harry's irises were as black as coal.

**\---**

"There must be something open."

After class, I could hear Harry's voice through the doors of the office before I even set foot inside it.

"Physics? Biochem?" he asked.

"No. Every class is full," the woman behind the front desk explained, then smiled when she spotted me in the doorway. "Just a minute, dear," she told me before turning her attention back to Harry, "I'm afraid you'll have to stay in biology."

"Fine," Harry muttered. "I'll just have to endure it."

I didn't even have time to step aside before he walked straight past me to storm out of the office.

**\---**

"I just can't get over how grown up you are... and _so_ gorgeous."

I couldn't help but smile bashfully at our family friend, Cora's, compliment. She was a waitress at Mark's favorite diner in town, where we were eating dinner that evening.

"Hey, Louis," a man I didn't initially recognize approached our table, soon after Cora had placed our meals before us. "You remember me?"

I slowly shrugged and glanced at my father for help.

"I played Santa one year," the man explained.

"Yeah, Waylon, he hasn't had a Christmas here since he was four," Mark explained.

"I bet I made an impression, though, didn't I?" Waylon chuckled.

"You always do," Mark laughed along with him.

"Alright, let the boy eat his garden burger, Waylon," Cora shook her head at him with an amused grin before looking at me once more. "As soon as you're done, I will bring you your favorite; Berry cobbler. Remember? Your dad still has it, every Thursday."

My heart swelled at the thought of my father missing me that much. I could really stand to visit him more often. "Thank you. That'd be great," I told Cora.

**\---**

_"Hey, baby."_

My mother's voice on the other end of my phone was a comforting sound, until I heard what she had to say next.

 _"So, listen, if spring training goes well, we could be moving to Florida--Please, insert $1.25 for an additional three minutes_ ," a robotic voice interrupted her from the payphone she was speaking from.

"Mom, where's your cell?" I asked from where I'd been studying on my bed.

 _"Okay, don't laugh,"_ she sighed. _"I didn't lose my power cord. It ran away, screaming. I literally repel technology now."_

I managed a laugh at that, despite the gut-wrenching fact that they were considering a move to Florida, on the completely opposite side of the country.

"I miss you," I told her.

 _"Oh, baby, I miss you, too... but tell me more about your school! Now, what are the kids like? Are there any cute guys?"_ she asked and I could hear her smirk through the receiver. _"Are they being nice to you?"_ she asked when I was silent for a moment.

"Well..." I pursed my lips in thought. "They're all _very_ welcoming," I scoffed quietly.

 _"Uh oh..."_ she said. _"Tell me all about it."_

"It doesn't even matter," I shoved my books aside and dropped my pencil onto my binder.

_"Yes, it does, honey."_

"I... I have homework to do. I'll talk to you later."

 _"Okay..."_ I could hear her frowning then. _"I love you."_

"Love you, too," I assured her before immediately hanging up and tossing my phone aside with a huff.

_Are there any cute guys?_

Yes.

Unfortunately, he also happened to be an arrogant asshole, which pretty much cancelled out any attractive thing about him.

I planned to confront him and demand to know what his problem was at school the next day, but he never showed, and the next day? Another no-show.

More days passed this way. Things were getting a little strange.

I slipped on the ice one morning before school. I didn't break anything, though. I just earned myself a soft chuckle from my father who had just returned to the house in my truck.

"You alright?" he asked as he took my hand and helped me to my feet.

"Yeah, I'm good. Ice doesn't really help the uncoordinated," I replied.

"Yeah," he agreed. "That's why I had some new tires put on the truck. The old ones were gettin' pretty bald," he tapped the front tire with the tip of his shoe. "Well, I'll probably be late for dinner. I gotta head down to Mason County. A security guard at the Grisham Mill got killed by some kind of animal," he explained.

"An animal...?" I raised a brow at that.

Mark shrugged as he made his way over to his police cruiser. "You're not in Phoenix anymore, Lou. Anyway, I figured I'd lend a hand."

"Be careful," I requested.

"Always am," he promised.

"And thanks for the tires."

"Yeah," he smiled before climbing into his vehicle, leaving me to do the same.

**\---**

"Hey, listen," Niall began as he walked with me to biology that morning. "Um... I was wondering, did you have a-a date to--"

"What's up, Arizona?" Liam suddenly stepped between us and shook his soaking wet baseball cap, directly over my head. "How're you likin' the rain, man? Better get used to it."

"Yeah, Liam, hey. You're real cute, man," Niall smiled at the boy despite his sarcasm.

"Oh, I know," Liam smirked.

"That was really awesome," Niall shook his head, and as we moved to find our seats, I found myself pausing momentarily because I hadn't expected to see a golden set of eyes watching me from my lab table.

Nevertheless, I took my seat.

"Hello."

I felt a shiver run up my spine at the sudden sound of a deep, gravelly English accent from beside me.

"I'm sorry, I didn't get a chance to introduce myself last week," he apologized. "I'm Harry Styles. You're Louis?"

"Um... yes," I nodded, slightly taken aback by his spontaneous show of manners as well as his voice.

"Onion root tip cells," Mr. Molina began our lecture, "that's what's on your slides right now, okay? So, separate and label them into the phases of mitosis, and the first partners that get it right are gonna win the Golden Onion." He brought up a golden replica of an actual onion, earning various hums of interest from a few of the other students.

"You can go first," Harry carefully slid the microscope toward me from where it had been sitting between us on the table.

"You were gone," I couldn't hold my tongue any longer. First he acted like he couldn't stand me, but now it was like a switch had been flipped, and he was behaving like a completely different person.

What gives?

"Yeah," he looked down at the table then, so I peeked at the root tip cells through the microscope. "I was out of town for a couple of days," he explained. "Personal reasons."

"Prophase," I said, regarding the cells.

"Do you mind if I look?" Harry raised a brow, as though he wasn't entirely sure of my conclusion. I pushed the microscope toward him then, and he smiled in amusement, before eyeing the cells for himself. "It's prophase," he confirmed and proceeded to write it down.

"Like I said..." I muttered under my breath, earning a smirk from the mysterious boy.

"So, are you enjoying the rain?" he asked me then and I couldn't help but laugh at that. "What?" the smile never seemed to leave his face.

"You're asking me about the _weather_?"

"Yeah, I... I guess I am."

"Well, I don't really like the rain," I admitted. "Any cold... _wet_ thing, I don't really..." I shook my head to show my indifference.

Harry just chuckled at that before switching out the slides on the microscope.

"What?"

"Nothing," he told me before leaning in to look at the next set of cells. "It's anaphase," he said after a moment.

When he moved to write it down, I asked, "you mind if I check?"

"Sure."

"Anaphase," I couldn't bring myself to meet his eyes after doing so.

"Like I said," he smirked once more before writing that down as well. "If you hate the cold and the rain so much, why'd you move to the wettest place in the continental U.S.?"

"It's complicated," I answered.

"I'm sure I can keep up."

That's when I looked at him again and found it a bit odd that he actually seemed interested in learning about my personal life. Then, somehow, I was unable to tear my gaze away from his. "Uh... my mom remarried, and then..." I shrugged.

"So, you don't like the guy, or...?"

"No, that's not..." I shook my head at that. "Dan's really nice."

Harry reached for the microscope then, and he quickly switched out the slides once more, before taking a look.

"It's metaphase," he told me. "You want to check it?" he offered with the softest lilt to his voice.

"I believe you," I said, then glanced down at the table when I realized just how quickly I'd said that.

**\---**

"Why didn't you move with your mother and Dan?" Harry asked me as we sauntered down the hallway together after class.

"Well, Dan's a minor league baseball player," I explained. "He travels a lot, and my mom stayed home with me, but I knew it made her unhappy... so, I figured I'd stay with my dad for a while," I shrugged.

"And now _you're_ unhappy?" he asked, a concerned furrow to his brow as he looked me in the eye.

"No..." I lied as smoothly as I could manage under his intense gaze.

"I'm sorry, I'm just..." Harry began. "I'm just trying to figure you out. You're very difficult for me to read."

"Hey, did you get contacts?" I asked him then.

"No."

"Your eyes... they were _black_ the last time I saw you," I shook my head in confusion, "and now they're, like... _golden_?"

"Yeah, I know. It's the uh... the fluorescents..."

I raised a brow at his answer, to which he immediately turned and walked away from me.

**\---**

After school, Harry watched me from beside his Audi as I made my way over to my truck, at the far end of the parking lot.

I tried to shake any thoughts of him from my head, as I placed my bag on the hood of the truck and dug through it to find my earphones, but in doing so, I failed to notice a van as it slid toward me over the icy pavement.

Within mere milliseconds, I felt an arm around my waist, tugging me away from the hood of my car, and then I heard the awful sound of what sounded like crunching metal.

When I opened my eyes, Harry was there before me. One of his arms had enveloped my waist, while his opposite hand was pressed firmly against what had apparently almost crushed me to death.

Harry's hand had left a sizable dent in the passenger door of Tyler Crowley's van, but once he was sure that I was unharmed, he was quick to let me go and return to his family before I could even begin to register what in the hell had just taken place.

"Louis!" Niall suddenly appeared at my side, along with Liam, Perrie, and Jade.

"Call 911!" Jade said as she knelt down before me and held onto my trembling hands.

"I already called," Liam assured. "They're gonna send somebody over soon."

"Louis, I'm _so_ sorry!" Tyler said once he'd gotten over his own initial shock and joined us beside his van. "I-I slid and I panicked!" he explained, with a tiny drop of blood trickling down his forehead.

Though, aside from the shock I was experiencing as well, I was able to walk away from the incident completely unscathed.

All thanks to Harry.


	4. three

"Lou, are you okay?" Mark asked me once he'd practically barged his way into my shared emergency room. Tyler sat on the examination table beside mine as a doctor stitched up the small gash just above his eyebrow. "You and I are gonna talk," he told Tyler sternly before focusing back on me. "You alright?"

"I'm fine, dad," I told him from where a nurse had been checking my blood pressure. "Calm down."

"I'm _so_ sorry, Louis," Tyler said sincerely. "I tried to stop..."

"I know," I nodded with a small smile. "It's okay."

"No," Mark shook his head at that. "It, sure as hell, is _not_ okay."

"Dad, it wasn't his fault."

"You could've been _killed_ ," he looked me in the eye then, with a sense of fear that I'd never seen in him before. I briefly wondered if it had anything to do with that animal he'd mentioned that morning. "You understand that?"

"Yes. But, I wasn't, so..."

"You can kiss your license goodbye," Mark told Tyler then, instead of choosing to argue with me about it, and I just sighed to myself before the door was swinging open once more, and another doctor entered the room.

"I heard the chief's son was here," he announced with a friendly smile.

"Dr. Styles," Mark greeted.

"Mark," the golden-eyed man nodded respectfully.

I couldn't help but gape as he made his way over to me and dismissed the nurse once she'd finished up recording my blood pressure.

I hadn't expected to meet Harry's father that day, nor had I expected my own father to already be of his acquaintance.

"I've got this one, Jackie," Dr. Styles assured the nurse, and accepted the clipboard with my information from her, before she left him to it. "Louis," he read my name aloud.

"Lou..." I requested quietly.

"Well, Lou, looks like you took quite a spill," he raised his brows as he briefly skimmed through the description of my visit. "How do you feel?"

"Good," I answered honestly, despite the fact that I still felt a bit shaken up by the whole ordeal. Though, Tyler took the brunt of the damage.

Dr. Styles set the clipboard aside, then raised a tiny flashlight from his coat pocket, and held an index finger up a few inches away from my face. "Look here," he requested, so I followed his finger back and forth as he checked my eyes within the light. "You might experience some post-traumatic stress or disorientation, but your vitals look good," he assured me. "No signs of any head trauma. I think you'll be just fine."

"I'm so sorry, Lou. I'm really--" Tyler's millionth apology was cut off when Mark reached up to tug the privacy curtain between us, blocking him from view.

"You know, it would've been a whole lot worse if Harry wasn't there," I told Dr. Styles. Surely he'd be proud to know that his son was a hero. "He knocked me out of the way."

"Harry?" Mark raised a brow at that, then looked at the doc. "Your boy?"

"Yeah, it was amazing," I added when Dr. Styles remained silent. "I mean, he got to me _so_ fast. He was _nowhere_ near me."

"Sounds like you were very lucky," he told me, and the friendly smile never seemed to leave his face. "Mark," he nodded once more before taking his leave.

**\---**

"I gotta go sign some paperwork," Mark told me on our way out of the ER. We had just reached the waiting room when he told me, "you should uh... probably call your mom."

My eyes widened at that. "Did you tell her?"

Mark shrugged as if to say it was out of his hands.

"She's probably just..." I shook my head in frustration, " _freaking_ out."

So, I reached in my pocket for my phone, as Mark moved to sign me out. However, when I walked over to the hallway for some privacy, I wasn't expecting to hear the sound of Harry's voice at the far end of it.

I felt a bit guilty for eavesdropping, but he seemed to be talking about the incident at school, along with his father and his sister, Rosalie.

"Fifteen kids saw what happened--" her brows were furrowed as she glared up at her taller brother.

"What was I supposed to do, then?" Harry asked her incredulously. "Let him _die_?"

"This isn't just about _you_. It's about _all_ of us."

"I think we should take this in my office," Dr. Styles told them, with his gaze suddenly locked on mine.

His kids glanced over at me then and watched as I struggled to form words for a moment. "C-Can I talk to you for a minute?" I asked Harry.

"Rosalie," Dr. Styles placed a hand on his daughter's shoulder and began to lead her away, just as Harry seemed to reluctantly approach me.

"What?" he asked once he joined me at the other end of the hall.

"H-How did you get over to me so fast?"

"I was standing right next to you, Louis."

"No," I shook my head at that. "You were next to your car, across the lot."

"No, I wasn't," he chuckled quietly.

" _Yes_ , you _were_ ," I narrowed my eyes at him in suspicion.

"Louis, you, uh... you hit your head. I think you're confused."

"I know what I saw," I told him and held his unwavering eye contact with a sudden surge of confidence because I knew for a fact that I was right.

"And what exactly was that?" his smile disappeared and his gaze hardened.

"You..." I began, taken aback by his sudden change of attitude. "You stopped the van... you _pushed it away with your hand_."

"Well, nobody's gonna believe you, so..."

"I wasn't gonna tell anybody," I said honestly. "I just need to know the truth..."

"Can't you just thank me and get over it?"

"Thank you," I replied immediately.

"You're not gonna let this go, are you?" he smirked once more.

"No."

"Well, then, I hope you enjoy disappointment," the corner of his mouth dropped and he shook his head at me before turning to walk away.

That night was the first night I'd dreamt of Harry Styles.

**\---**

"Look at you, huh?" Liam's sudden appearance before me, in the parking lot at school the next morning, shook any distracting thoughts from my head. "You're alive!"

"I know, yeah," I chuckled quietly, just as I spotted Harry and his siblings talking amongst themselves by their vehicles. "False alarm, I guess."

"Now, I wanted to ask you, you know..." he began nervously, just as Niall had the other day, and I felt pretty bad for becoming distracted by the honey-eyed boy at the far end of the lot. "It's like a month away, but... do you wanna go to--uh--go to prom with me?"

Harry's eyes were on me, practically boring holes into my skull with the heat of his gaze.

"So, w-what do you think?" Liam hummed, gaining my attention once more.

"About what?" I asked dumbly.

"Do you want to go...?" he replied timidly. "To prom? W-With me?"

"Oh, I--" I felt my cheeks flush at his request. "Prom..." I thought aloud and quickly tried to think of any excuse as to why I wouldn't be able to make it.

It wasn't that I didn't want to go to the dance with Liam, or even with Niall, for that matter. I didn't want to go to _any_ dance _at all_. As I'd told Niall, on my first day, I was _definitely_ more of the suffer-in-silence type.

"Dancing..." I began to shake my head. "Not such a good idea for me. I have something that weekend anyway," I explained when I remembered what my mom had told me, over the phone, about a week before; How they were considering a move to Florida. "I'm going to Jacksonville that weekend."

"You can't go another weekend?" Liam asked curiously.

"Non-refundable ticket," I answered, then upon watching a frown form on his face, I told him, "you should ask Perrie. I know she wants to go with you."

As if on cue, he glanced over at the blonde girl, who was standing across the way, next to Jade, near the school busses that would be taking all of the biology students on a field trip that morning.

Perrie waved at him with a bashful smile, when she realized he'd been staring, and he waved back before offering me a happy smile.

"Hey, guys, come on! We gotta go! Green is what? Good!" Mr. Molina encouraged the rest of us to board the busses.

**\---**

"What's in Jacksonville?"

My lips parted and my brows furrowed in confusion when Harry suddenly prompted me with the question in the composting greenhouse we'd been taken to.

"How did you know about that?"

"You didn't answer my question."

"Well, you don't answer any of mine, so..." I left the statement open ended. "I mean, you don't even say _hi_ to me."

"Hi..." he said after briefly rolling his eyes.

"Are you gonna tell me how you stopped the van?" I lowered my voice as we followed along with the other students through the aisles of various plants and vegetation.

"Yeah," he answered. "I had an adrenaline rush. It's very common. You can Google it."

"Floridians. That's what's in Jacksonville--" I answered his initial question just as as vaguely as he had, and I nearly fell head over heels, due to a hose on the ground that I hadn't paid any attention to, had it not been for Harry's hand easily grasping my bicep to keep me upright.

"Can you at least watch where you walk?" he muttered in annoyance, causing me to scoff and continue walking without another word. "Look, I'm sorry I'm being rude all the time..." he shook his head self-deprecatingly. "I just think it's the best way--"

"Louis!" Perrie suddenly joined us near the back of the group then. "Guess who just asked me to prom!"

We both watched as Harry just kept walking, not even bothering to bid either of us a goodbye before doing so.

"Who?" I asked her, somewhat unenthusiastically.

"I uh... I actually totally thought that Liam was going to ask _you_ ," she admitted. "It's not going to be weird, though, right?"

"No," I assured her honestly. "Zero weirdness. You guys are great together."

"I know, right?" she smiled giddily, even as I walked a bit faster in order to exit the greenhouse.

I'd hoped that I could just sneak my way back onto the bus and be left alone for the remainder of the trip, but to no avail it seemed, as Harry quickly caught up to me outside.

"Louis, we shouldn't be friends," he told me bluntly.

"You really should've figured that out a little earlier," I replied bitterly. "I mean, why didn't you just let the van crush me and save yourself all this _regret_?"

He stopped me then, looking me dead in the eye. "What, you think I regret saving you?"

"I can _see_ that you do," I answered. "I just... I don't know _why_."

"You don't know anything."

"Hi!" a bubbly voice chirped from behind us. Harry's sister, Alice, stood there with an inviting grin. "Are you gonna be riding with us?" she asked me curiously.

"No. Our bus is full," Harry said, before turning to board it without another word.


	5. four

"Hey!" Niall greeted me when I joined our usual table in the cafeteria. "La Push, baby. You in?"

"La Push Beach down at the Quileute Rez," Liam explained, assuming I hadn't already known. "We're all going tomorrow."

"Yeah, there's a big swell coming in," Perrie added.

"And I don't just surf the internet," Niall smirked.

"Niall, you stood up once, and it was a foam board," she giggled.

"But there's whale watching, too," Jade said from where she was sitting beside me. "Come with us."

"La Push, baby. It's _La Push_ ," Niall annunciated the name as clear as day.

"Okay, I'll go if you stop saying that," I teased him, earning a few laughs from the rest of them before I moved to grab myself some lunch.

I stood at the salad bar, distractedly arranging vegetables on my plate, as a way to pass the time, I guess.

"Edible art?"

I dropped the apple I'd been holding at the sudden sound of Harry's voice beside me. 

"Louis," he greeted casually, after kicking the apple up into his hand with ease.

Show off.

"You know, your mood swings are kind of giving me whiplash," I sighed as I walked past him to reach the opposite side of the salad bar.

"I only said it'd be better if we weren't friends, not that I didn't wanna be," he told me.

"What does that mean?" I shook my head at that.

"It means, if you were _smart_ , you'd stay away from me."

"Okay, well, let's say, for argument's sake, that I'm _not_ smart," I looked up at him then. "Would you tell me the truth?"

"No, probably not," he answered. I sighed, but at least he was being honest with me. "I'd rather hear your theories," he said then.

"I have considered..." I began with a curt laugh, "radioactive spiders... and Kryptonite."

He briefly laughed at that as well. "That's all superhero stuff, right? But what if I'm _not_ the hero?" he asked me seriously. "What if I'm the _bad guy_?"

"You're not..." I shook my head again. "I can see what you're trying to put off, but I can see that it's just to keep people away from you. It's a mask."

He was silent for a moment, a furrow to his brows as he seemed to think it over.

"Why don't we just... hang out?" I suggested on a whim. "Everybody's going to the beach. Come. I mean... have fun."

"Which beach?" he asked with the ghost of a smile, as though he was actually considering it.

"La Push."

That answer seemed to change his mind.

"I dunno..."

"Is there something wrong with that beach?" I raised an expectant brow.

"It's just a little crowded," was all he said in return.

**\---**

"I'm paddling out," Tyler announced at La Push as he jogged through our group with his surfboard.

"I don't know if it's worth it anymore," Niall chuckled anxiously from where we were, beneath the cover of grey clouds and sprinkling rainfall.

"We drove all the way out here," Perrie replied to that as she finished zipping up her wetsuit. "I'm at least paddling out. You guys are babies."

"So..." Jade began quietly as we were sitting in Tyler's open van. "I keep thinking that Niall's gonna ask me to the prom... and then he just _doesn't_."

"You should ask him," I shrugged. "Take control. You're a strong, independent woman."

"I am?"

"Yes," I replied sincerely, earning a hopeful smile from her, and she glanced over at Niall, just as Jacob Black suddenly approached the van with a few friends.

"Lou!" he greeted with a surprised smile.

"Hi, Jacob," I returned the grin before looking toward my friends. "Guys, this is Jacob."

"Hi," he took the time to politely shake each of their hands, before moving to sit beside me, among the opened sliding door of Tyler's van.

"What, are you, like, stalking me?" I smirked at him, causing him to scoff.

" _You're_ on _my_ rez, remember?" his smirk matched mine for a moment, until I looked away and nodded upon remembering. "Are you surfing?" he asked me in astonishment.

" _Definitely_ not," I shook my head and offered him one of the cherry Twizzlers I'd been snacking on.

"Thanks," he accepted one of the candies.

"You guys should keep Louis company," Perrie told Jacob and his friends. "His date bailed."

"What date?" Niall's brows furrowed in confusion at that.

"He invited Harry," Perrie couldn't help but giggle upon answering his question.

"To be polite. That's it," I shook my head again.

"I think it's nice he invited him," Jade shrugged from the passenger seat. "Nobody ever does."

"Yeah, 'cause Styles is a _freak_ ," Liam muttered.

"You got that right," one of Jacob's friends chimed in with a curt laugh of his own.

"You guys know him?" I asked curiously.

"The Styles don't come here," he shook his head seriously, earning looks of disapproval from Jacob and his other friend.

**\---**

"What did your friends mean about... you know, _the Styles don't come here_?" I quoted as I walked along the beach beside Jacob.

"You caught that, huh?" he chuckled for a moment before the smile slowly fell from his face. "I'm not really supposed to say anything about it..."

"Well, hey, I can keep a secret."

He laughed again. "Really, it's just like an old, scary story."

I shrugged at that. "Well, I wanna know."

"Okay, um..." he seemed to think it over for a moment before explaining, "did you know Quileutes are supposedly descended from... _wolves_?"

"What?" I raised a brow at that. "Like... _wolves_? Real wolves?"

"Yeah," he nodded, with an amused grin that told me he didn't quite believe it, either. "Well, that's the legend of our tribe."

"Okay... so, what's the story about the Styles?"

"Well, they're supposedly descended from this, like... _enemy_ clan," he shrugged it off. "My great grandfather, the chief, found them hunting on our land... but they claimed to be something different, so we made a treaty with them; If they promised to stay off Quileute lands, then we wouldn't expose what they _really_ were to the palefaces," he gave me a sly once over.

"I thought they just moved here...?" I shook my head in confusion.

"Or just moved back," he thought aloud.

"Right..." I nodded at the idea. "Well, what are they, _really_?"

Jacob laughed at that. "It's just a story, Louis. Come on, let's go."

That night, at home, I decided that if Jacob wasn't going to let me in on the legends of his tribe, I would just take Harry's suggestion, from the greenhouse, and simply Google it.

I found a book, written by the people of Jacob's tribe. It was for sale, at a single bookstore, in Port Angeles.

**\---**

"He's not here," Perrie hummed, from where she sat upon our table in the courtyard of the school, as she must've caught me glancing around in search of Harry's familiar face. "Whenever the weather's nice, the Styles disappear," she closed her eyes and basked in the warmth of the sunlight.

"What, do they just ditch?" I asked curiously.

"No. Dr. and Mrs. Styles yank 'em out for, like, hiking and camping and stuff. I tried that out on my parents... not even _close_."

"Guys!" Jade chirped when she suddenly joined us outside. "I'm going to the prom with Niall! I just asked him... I took control," she leaned over to hug me tightly.

"I told you that would happen," I grinned as I gave her a friendly squeeze.

"Are you sure you have to go out of town?" she frowned when she pulled away.

"Oh, yeah... it's a little family thing."

"Okay, well, we should go shopping in Port Angeles before all the _good_ dresses get cleaned out," Perrie told Jade.

"Port Angeles?" the city's name peaked my interest, of course. "You mind if I come?"

" _Yeah_ ," Jade said, as though my question wasn't necessary. "I need your opinion."

**\---**

"Okay, I like this one. It makes my boobs look good," Perrie hummed from where she stood beside Jade in the mirror of the store. She wore a low-cut, magenta gown, as Jade opted for lavender.

As they admired themselves in their reflection, a group of guys passed by the window. A few of them knocked on it to get the girls' attention. "Nice!" one of them smirked, earning a few laughs from his friends, when the girls just quietly scoffed and turned away from the window.

"Oh, God... that is uncomfortable," Perrie admitted.

"That's disgusting," I shook my head and glared at the group of guys as they walked off.

"Louis, what do you think?" she asked as she turned to face me then. "Yes?" she hummed hopefully.

"That looks great," I offered a genuine smile.

"You said that about, like, the last five dresses, though..." she giggled.

"I thought they were all pretty good," I shrugged at that.

"You're not really into this, are you?" Jade asked.

"I actually really just wanted to go to this bookstore..." I explained as I stood from the chair I'd been sitting in for what felt like several hours. "Um, I'll meet you guys at the restaurant?"

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah, yeah. I'll see you in a minute," I assured them as I gathered my things and began to head out the door.

**\---**

"There you go," a Native American man handed over the book of Quileute legends after I'd finally purchased it from his store. "Have a good night."

"Thank you," I smiled warmly as I made my leave, but as I made my way down the street to the restaurant, it felt as though I was being watched, and I didn't exactly know how to feel about that.

I immediately regretted my decision to leave on my own when a pair of silhouettes began to approach me from the opposite end of an alleyway. I turned on my heel, kept my head down, and began to speed-walk in my original direction.

"Saw you in the dress store," one of them called out to me, causing unwelcome goosebumps to trail up my spine. "Hey, where you runnin' to?"

"Oh, _there_ he is," another man smirked as I'd failed to notice him approaching me. "It's my boy," he said, regarding me. "How you guys doin'?" he asked the others.

"Look who we just found," they replied, gesturing to me.

I tried to run, but one of them held me by the bicep before I could.

"Hey, where're you goin'?" his brows furrowed as he stared down at me. "Come get a drink with us."

"Yeah, you should hang out with us," another hummed, and they all circled around me like vultures.

"You're pretty," one of them reached out to caress my cheek, to which I finally snapped.

"Don't touch me."

"Cute," he replied, and he leaned in closer, as though he was about to kiss me.

"Don't touch me!" I emphasized with a knee to his groin, causing him to back away from me with a cry of pain.

The others laughed and I prepared for them to jump me, until we were all suddenly distracted by the screeching sound of car tires on the wet asphalt.

A grey Audi came drifting around the corner, before abruptly stopping, just before us.

I gaped as I watched Harry Styles immediately emerge from the driver's side.

"Get in the car," he told me before slamming the door shut, and I quickly did as I was told, despite my confusion as to what he was even doing here.

I slipped into the passenger side, and I took a deep breath, as I watched Harry approach the group of men who had clearly planned to assault me in some way.

I couldn't hear any of the dialogue between them, but whatever Harry had said in that moment, caused the rest of them to slowly back away with fearful expressions on each of their faces.

Harry returned to the Audi then, plopping down into the driver's seat and shutting the door before he revved the engine, and the car surged forward for a moment. He stomped on the brake, just before the bumper could make contact with their knees. Then he suddenly shifted into reverse, and quickly accelerated.

Skillfully, he pulled the steering wheel to the right, just as he pressed the brake again, sending the front of the car whipping back in a 180 degree turn in order to quickly flee the scene.

"I should go back there and rip those guys' heads off," Harry growled from where he was focused on speeding down the road, bobbing and weaving between other cars.

"Uh--No, you shouldn't," I answered, despite the nervous beat to my heart as I held onto the inner door handle.

"You don't know the _vile_ , _repulsive_ things they were thinking."

"And _you_ do?" I asked incredulously.

"It's not hard to guess," he shook his head, but I had a pretty huge feeling that it was far more complicated than that. "Can we talk about something else?" he requested. "Distract me, so I won't turn around."

"You should put your seatbelt on."

Harry laughed at that before glancing over at me. " _You_ should put _your_ seatbelt on," he told me, to which I looked down and realized he was right, before he pulled into the opposite lane of traffic in order to pass the car in front of us.


	6. five

"Hey, you guys," I rushed out to Perrie and Jade as they were exiting the restaurant we were supposed to meet up at. "I'm so sorry, I just--"

"Where were you? We left you messages," Jade asked in concern.

"Yeah, we waited, but we were starving, so we--" Perrie immediately stopped talking when she spotted Harry stepping out of the same car that I'd just gotten out of.

"I, uh... I'm sorry I kept Louis from dinner," Harry apologized once he joined us on the sidewalk. "We just sort of ran into each other and got talking."

"Yeah--" Jade smiled and couldn't seem to meet his gaze.

"No--We totally understand. I mean, that happens, right?" Perrie giggled nervously.

"W-We were just, uh--" Jade stuttered out.

"We were just leaving, yeah, so..." Perrie vaguely gestured toward the street. "So, Louis, if you wanna--"

"I think I should make sure Louis gets something to eat," Harry said then, causing all three of us to gape in response. "If you'd like," he looked down at me then, to which I found myself nodding in response. "I'll drive you home myself."

"That's so thoughtful," Jade hummed.

"It's _really_ thoughtful," Perrie agreed.

"Yeah..." I chuckled nervously. "I should eat something."

"Okay, so we'll see you tomorrow, then," Perrie playfully nudged my arm with her elbow.

"See ya!" Jade chirped with a knowing smirk as she glanced back and forth between Harry and I.

Then they were leaving, and Harry was leading me up to the entrance of the restaurant.

**\---**

"You're really not gonna eat?" I asked after the waitress had placed my meal before me, and nothing in front of Harry.

"No," he answered. "I'm on a... special diet."

"You've gotta give me some answers," I quietly begged, to which he hummed in thought.

"Yes. No," he teased. "To get to the other side... 1.77245--"

"I don't wanna know what the square root of pi is," I shook my head at him.

"You knew that?"

"How did you know where I was?" I challenged.

"I didn't," he answered, and he seemed to be telling me the truth, despite his vague response.

"Alright," I shrugged and moved to stand from my seat, to which he reached for my forearm.

"Don't leave..." he requested, so I hesitantly sat back down again. "I--"

"Did you follow me?" I asked.

"I... I feel very... _protective_ of you," he told me, just above a whisper.

"So, you followed me...?"

"I was trying to keep a distance, unless you needed my help," he shook his head, "and then I heard what those low-lifes were thinking..."

"Wait," my brows furrowed at that. "You say you _heard what they were thinking_?"

He pursed his lips at that.

"So, what, you... you read minds?"

Harry looked me in the eye then. "I can read every mind in this room," he confessed. "Apart from yours."

He seemed to be able to sense that I didn't believe him, so he proceeded to look around at the other diners.

"There's money... sex... money and sex," he listed off different things that they had apparently been thinking about in that moment. " _Cat_..." he raised an amused brow as he glanced back at the usher.

I still hadn't decided if I believed him or not, but I offered an impressed expression, to which he looked me in the eye once more.

"And then you? _Nothing_ ," he said simply. "It's very frustrating."

"Is there something wrong with me?" I asked curiously.

Harry chuckled quietly. "See, I tell you that I can _read minds_ , and you think there's something wrong with _you_ ," he shook his head.

His smile fell and he suddenly looked away, so I hesitantly asked, "what is it?"

"I don't have... the _strength_... to stay away from you anymore."

"Then, don't," I found myself whispering.

Harry's lips parted, and his honey gold irises seemed to fill with joy, but even so, he couldn't bring himself to say anything else.

**\---**

"Okay, I think I'm warm enough, now," I hummed from the passenger side of his car once we were back on the road.

I reached for the knob to adjust the temperature, just as Harry had reached to do the same, and when our hands brushed for a moment, I couldn't contain the gasp that escaped my lips upon feeling his ice cold flesh.

"Your hand is so _cold_ ," I thought aloud in concern.

How the hell was he clearly _freezing_ when he had turned the heat all the way up the second he started the car?

Harry didn't say anything, however, he just returned both of his hands to the wheel, and before I could press the matter any further, flashing red and blue lights could be seen up ahead of us in the road.

"Whoa," my heartbeat sped up a bit when I recognized the police station where my father worked. "What is going on?" I thought aloud, and when I spotted his cruiser parked out front, my brows furrowed in concern. "My dad's still here... can you pull in?" I asked.

"That's my father's car on the end," Harry pointed out, and he appeared just as confused as I was, when we pulled up to the station and parked out front. "What is he doing here?" he asked rhetorically and we were quick to exit the car together.

"Desmond, what's going on?" Harry addressed his adoptive father by his first name when the older man emerged from the station just as we approached it.

"Waylon Forge was found in a boat, out near his place," Dr. Styles answered with a hint of despondency. "I just examined the body."

"He _died_?" I asked in shock. "How?"

"Animal attack," he replied simply.

"Was it the same one that got that security guard down in Mason?"

"Most likely," Dr. Styles nodded.

"Well, it's getting closer to town, then--"

"Louis, you should go inside," he told me. "Waylon was your father's friend."

"Okay," I nodded in agreement, and I ascended the steps to reach the door, before turning back to tell Harry, "um... I'll see you later..."

**\---**

"Hey..."

"Hey," Mark replied quietly from where he was watching the news on the computer at his desk.

"Dad, I'm really sorry..."

"I've known him goin' on 30 years..." he said in astonishment. I placed my hand on his shoulder then, letting him know that I was there for him if he needed me, and he graciously reached up to hold onto my fingertips. "Don't worry." He assured me, "we're gonna find this thing."

He reached into a drawer in his desk then and pulled out a small canister, which I recognized as pepper spray.

"In the meantime... I want you to carry this with you," he held it up for me to grab.

I cringed at the sudden thought of me accidentally spraying myself or someone else with it, and decided that it probably wasn't the best idea for him to trust me with something like that. "I dunno if you--"

"It'll give your ol' man some peace of mind," he offered a weak smile, and how could I possibly deny him, then?

"Okay," I hesitantly agreed, and I accepted the canister from him, before slipping it into my coat pocket.

"Let's go home," he said, and once we made it back, I spent the entire rest of the night with my nose between the pages of the book of Quileute legends.

There were several graphic descriptions, and artistic depictions, of a humanoid creature of sorts, of which they continuously urged the reader to be wary of.

They had named it Apotamkin, or _The Cold One_ , as their flesh was said to be cold to the touch.

The Cold One was also said to be undead, as well as _immortal_ , with supernatural characteristics, such as strength and speed.

It didn't take very long for me to discern that these were the very same unconventional characteristics I had recognized in one Harry Styles.

**\---**

At school the next day, as he stared at me from the far end of the parking lot, I couldn't even bring myself to meet his golden gaze.

I walked beyond him, beyond his car, beyond the school, and into the forest of evergreen behind it.

If he really felt as protective of me as he said he had, then I felt no real need to glance back to be sure he was following me.

I stopped, several minutes later, once I was sure we were deep enough within the cover of the trees to avoid anyone eavesdropping.

"You're impossibly fast and strong..." I began, as I could hear the sound of twigs and grass, crunching beneath his shoes as he approached. "Your skin is pale white and ice cold... your eyes change color... and sometimes you speak like... like you're _from a different time_."

He remained silent, even though I could feel his presence directly behind me then.

"You never eat or drink _anything_... you don't go out in the sunlight..." I continued before asking him, "how _old_ are you?"

"17," he finally spoke up.

Then I hesitantly prompted, "...how long have you been 17?"

"A while."

I exhaled a shaky breath upon hearing that, but even so, I confidently told him, "I know what you are."

"Say it," he dared me. "Out loud."

I swallowed thickly and felt my clammy hands clenching anxiously at my sides.

" _Say it_."

"Vampire," the word seemed to escape on its own and I quietly gasped because of it.

"Are you afraid?" he asked me then.

I turned around, looked him dead in the eye, and honestly told him, "no."

"Then ask me the most basic question; What do we eat?"

"You won't hurt me..." I said, despite my nervously thrumming heart.

He seized my arm then, rather than replying, in order to lead me even deeper into the forest.

"Where are we going?" I breathed.

"Up the mountain. Out of the cloud bank," he answered before pausing to look at me once more. "You need to see what I look like in the sunlight."

Before I could even think of a response to that, Harry took my hands and knelt down before me. With my hands holding onto his shoulders, he reached back to hold onto my thighs, and swiftly began to carry me away.

Within what had felt like a span of about five seconds, we reached the peak of the mountain, and Harry set me back on the ground.

I watched, almost breathlessly, as he kept walking ahead, until he was standing within a beaming ray of sunlight that peeked through the trees.

"This is why we don't show ourselves in sunlight. People would know we're different," he told me, and then he proceeded to unbutton his dress shirt.

I could sense his hesitation, as well as his insecurity, when he slowly turned to face me. His jaw was set, and his pale skin became alight with a diamond-like shimmer, within the sun's light.

"This is what I am."

"I-It's like _diamonds_..." I gaped at the sight of his glimmering chest. "You're beautiful," the comment slipped out against my will.

" _Beautiful_?" he asked incredulously. "This is the skin of a _killer_ , Louis," he stepped out of the sunlight and buttoned up his shirt. "I'm a _killer_."

"I don't believe that."

I followed him when he began to wander back down the trail that he had just carried me up.

"That's because you believe a lie; It's camouflage," he shook his head when he turned to look at me again. "I'm the world's most _dangerous_ predator, yet everything about me invites you in; My voice, my face, even my smell. As if I would _need_ any of that."

He disappeared for a moment then, and I quickly glanced around, to find him standing atop a boulder a few yards away.

"As if you could outrun me!" he shouted before disappearing again.

Then he was standing right in front of me.

"As if you could fight me off," he gave a curt laugh at the thought of that ever actually happening, and then he reached down to _pull an entire tree root from the ground_ with ease before angrily throwing it aside. "I'm designed to _kill_."

"I don't care," I replied despite anxiously gulping.

"I've killed people before."

"It doesn't matter..." I shook my head, and I bravely took a step closer to him, to show him that I meant it.

"I wanted to kill _you_ ," he confessed, and his gaze never averted from my own, even as he leaned in close and told me, "I've never wanted a human's blood so much in my _life_."

I took one look at his full, cherry red lips, and said, "I trust you."

" _Don't_."

My brows furrowed at his stubbornness, but nevertheless, I emphasized, "I'm here," and found myself leaning in to kiss his pouty lips. "I trust you--" I gasped when he suddenly disappeared again before our lips could meet.

"My family..." he began, from where he was now standing upon a high branch of the tree behind me, "we're _different_ from others of our kind; We only hunt animals. We've learned to control our thirst. But it's _you_..." he leaned down towards me, keeping himself steady on the branch with one hand. "Your _scent_... It's like a _drug_ to me. You're like my own personal brand of heroin."

If everything he was telling me was the truth, then, "why did you hate me so much when we met?"

"I did," he admitted as he began to climb down. "Only for making me want you so badly. I still don't know if I can control myself..."

"I know you can," I met him at the roots of the tree, quietly challenging him to accept the fact that I wasn't going anywhere.

He wasn't getting rid of me that easily.

He grabbed my shoulders and turned us, then walked me back toward the tree's trunk and placed his hands on it, to either side of my head, once my back was flush against it.

"I can't read your mind," he said. "You have to tell me what you're thinking."

"Now, I'm afraid..."

"Good," he muttered.

"I'm not afraid of _you_ ," I explained. "I'm afraid of _losing_ you. I feel like you're gonna disappear..."

Harry slowly met my gaze again in order to tell me, "you don't know how long I've waited for you..."

When he moved one of his palms and placed it over my heart, I only hoped that he could feel the way it threatened to beat out of my chest and surrender itself to him, _completely_.

"And so, the lion fell in love with the lamb."

My lips parted in wonder at his words.

"What a _stupid_ lamb."

"What a _sick_ , _masochistic_ lion."


	7. six

About three things, I was absolutely positive.

First, Harry was a vampire. Second, there was a part of him, and I didn't know how dominant that part might be, that thirsted for my blood. Third, I was _unconditionally_ , and _irrevocably_ , in love with him.

**\---**

"Monte Carlo?" Perrie raised a brow as Niall passed out flyers for prom in the parking lot at school. "That's our prom theme?"

Niall hummed as confirmation before explaining, "gambling, tuxedos, and Bond, _James_ Bond," he smirked.

" _Oh, my God_ ," Jade, and just about everyone else in the damn lot, gaped as they watched Harry round the front of his Audi, open the passenger door, and offer a beaming smile as I emerged from it.

As Harry shut the door behind me, I glanced around at everyone that was gawking at us. "You know, everybody's staring," I muttered to him then.

Harry just shrugged. "I'm breaking all the rules, now, anyway," he wrapped a comforting arm around my shoulders and absentmindedly rubbed my bicep over the denim of my jacket. "Since I'm going to Hell," he called back to someone in particular and I glanced back to catch all four of his foster siblings staring back at us.

Needless to say, not everyone was entirely enthused.

**\---**

"So, does a person have to be dying..." I began hesitantly as we wandered the mountainside together after school, "to become like you?"

"No, that's... that's just Des," Harry explained. "He'd _never_ do this to someone who had another choice."

"So, how long have you been like this?" I asked him curiously.

"Since 1918," he answered timidly. "That's when Desmond found me... dying of Spanish influenza."

"What was it like...?" I wondered how it felt to be turned.

"The venom was _excruciating_ ," he admitted. "But what Desmond did was much harder. Not many of us have the restraint to do that."

"Didn't he just have to... bite?" I asked, ever the curious lamb I was.

"Not exactly," he shook his head. Then he proceeded to explain further, "when we taste human blood, a sort of... frenzy begins, and it's almost impossible to stop."

"But Desmond did?"

Harry nodded. "First with me, and then with his wife, Anne."

"So, is Desmond the real reason that you don't... _kill_ people?"

"No. He's not the only reason. I don't want to be a monster," Harry confessed. "My family? We think of ourselves as vegetarians, right," he joked, "'cause we only survive on the blood of animals. But it's... it's like a human only living on _tofu_. Keeps you strong, but you're never... _fully_ satisfied. It wouldn't be like drinking _your_ blood, for instance."

He chuckled at the thought of that for a moment before I curiously asked, "was it other vampires that killed Waylon?"

"Yeah," he answered simply. "There are others out there, and we run into them, from time to time."

"Can the rest of your family read peoples' minds, like you can?"

"No," he said. "That's just me, but Alice can see the future."

"I bet she saw me coming."

"Alice's visions are subjective," he shook his head. "I mean, the future can always change."

**\---**

"Can you act human?" I scoffed when Harry jumped from the hood of my truck onto the roof while I'd been washing it in my driveway that weekend. "I mean, I've got neighbors."

He laughed his beautiful laugh as he jumped down into the bed before finally hopping out to stand before me. "I'm gonna take you to my place tomorrow," he beamed.

Then, upon noticing a sizable indentation in the fender flare above the back wheel, he reached behind it to push the dent out of it with ease.

"Thanks," I giggled at his sudden show of strength before I registered what he had just told me. "Wait, like, with your _family_?"

"Yeah," he nodded.

"What if they don't like me?"

"So, you're worried, not because you'll be in a _house full of vampires_ , but because you think they won't _approve of you_?" he smirked at how silly I apparently sounded.

"I'm glad I amuse you," I rolled my eyes.

He seemed as though he was going to reply, until his attention was suddenly drawn to his left. He inhaled deeply, which caused his lovely smile to fall into a grimace upon his lips.

"What is it?" I glanced down the street to try and discern whatever was captivating his thoughts in that moment.

"Complication," he answered simply, and I wasn't quite sure what he meant by that, but before I could ask, he sighed and told me, "I'll pick you up tomorrow."

I nodded, despite how disappointed I was that he had to leave so suddenly, and watched him take off in his Audi, just before I spotted Billy Black's pickup truck pulling up.

"Hey," I greeted him, and Jacob, once he'd helped his father out of the truck. "Come to visit your truck?"

"Yeah," Jacob chuckled. "Looks good. See you got that dent out," he smiled like he was proud of me.

"Actually, we came to visit your flat-screen," Billy joked. "First Mariners game of the season!" he cheered enthusiastically. "Plus, Jacob here keeps bugging me about seein' you again."

"Great, dad," Jacob pursed his lips. "Thanks."

"Just keepin' it real, son."

"Vitamin R," Mark jokingly announced when he joined us on the driveway with two six packs of Rainier beer cans.

"Well done, chief. Homemade fish fry," Billy held up the paper bag in his lap before handing it up to Jacob.

"Good man," Mark smiled, and he set the beer in Billy's lap, before he began to wheel him into the house.

"Any luck with that Waylon case?" Billy asked him as Jacob and I followed along.

"Well, I don't think it was an animal that killed him."

"Never thought it was," Billy replied.

"So, spread the word out at the rez, huh?" Mark requested of him and Jacob. "Keep the kids out of the woods."

"Will do," Billy nodded. "Don't want no one else gettin' hurt, do we?" he glanced up at me as he asked this, causing me to simply purse my lips and remain silent.

**\---**

Harry disappeared for a moment once we pulled up to his family's _gorgeous_ home the next day. He'd just climbed out of the driver's side, before he suddenly reappeared by the passenger to open the door for me. He seemed pretty excited to be introducing me to his folks and it was incredibly endearing.

Their house was entirely modern, with massive floor-to-ceiling windows, and beautiful black marble architecture.

"Whoa..." I said once he led me inside and closed the door behind us. "This is incredible. It's so _light_... and _open_..."

"What did you expect? Coffins and dungeons and moats?" he teased me as he helped me out of my jacket and placed it on the bench near the door.

"No, not the moats," I joked whilst he led me deeper into their home.

"Not the moats," he shook his head with a soft laugh at that before beginning to ascend the staircase in the corner. "This is the one place we don't have to hide," he explained when he turned to face me for a moment. Then he warned me, "I told them not to do this..."

"Is he even French?" I could hear Rosalie's voice before I could see her scowling face.

"His name is _Louis_ ," Emmett replied as if it was obvious.

"I'm sure he'll love it, no matter what," Desmond calmly consoled them.

"Phew... get a whiff of _that_ ," Rosalie commented, once Harry and I reached the top of the stairs to find his family standing in the kitchen, preparing a meal. "Here comes the _human_."

"Louis," a woman, who I could only assume to be Harry's foster mother, greeted me with a smile. "We're making boursin-stuffed chicken for you."

"Louis, this is Anne," Harry introduced us then, "my mother for all intents and purposes."

"Bonjour," I offered a warm smile to her in return. "J'espère que vous allez bien."

_Hello, I hope you are well._

"Très bon," Anne chirped, seemingly impressed by my comprehension of my French language class.

_Very good._

"You've given us an excuse to use the kitchen for the first time," Desmond chuckled.

"I hope you're hungry," Anne hummed, causing me to purse my lips awkwardly.

"Yeah, absolutely," I lied. I had actually just eaten before Harry picked me up, as I hadn't entirely expected them to go out of their way to cook for me like this.

"He already ate," Harry explained.

Then there was a sudden sound of shattering glass, and everyone turned to stare, as Rosalie had angrily crushed the bowl of salad she had been holding.

" _Perfect_ ," she glared at me.

"Y-Yeah, it's just because I-I know that you guys don't eat, so--" I tried to explain.

"Of course," Anne nodded in agreement. "That's very considerate of you."

"Just ignore Rosalie," Harry told me. "I do."

"Yeah," Rosalie's brows furrowed at that. "Let's just keep pretending like this isn't dangerous, for _all_ of us."

"I would never tell anybody anything," I promised them sincerely.

"She knows that," Desmond sighed to himself.

"Yeah, well, the problem is, you two have gone public now, so--"

"Emmett," Anne shook her head at him.

"No, he should know," Rosalie decided then, still staring directly at me. "The _entire family_ will be implicated if this ends badly."

"Badly as in... I would become the meal?" I assumed, and they all just laughed at that, before a familiar voice was sounding through the front door.

"Hi, Louis!" Harry's bubbly brunette sister joined us then, along with Jasper. "I'm Alice," she greeted me politely as if I wasn't already aware.

"Um, hi," I went a little rigid when she unabashedly hugged me, and Jasper just stared.

"Hi," she smiled, then upon pulling away from me she said, "oh... you _do_ smell good."

"Alice," Harry's brows furrowed at her. "What are you--"

"It's okay," Alice assured him before looking at me once more. "Louis and I are gonna be great friends."

"Sorry," Desmond apologized to me on behalf of Jasper. "Jasper's our newest vegetarian," he explained. "It's a little difficult for him."

"It's a pleasure to meet you," Jasper told me and I watched his Adam's apple bob as he swallowed anxiously.

"It's okay, Jasper," Alice encouraged him. "You won't hurt him."

Harry just shook his head at them before turning to me. "Alright, I'm gonna take you on a tour of the rest of the house," he excused us both from the awkward company of his family.

"Okay," I nodded.

"Was that as weird for you as it was for me?" he asked as he led me up another set of stairs.

"Uh, I dunno," I chuckled honestly, just as we passed by a display case on the wall, containing several graduation caps of various shades of blue. "Graduation caps?"

"Yeah," Harry pursed his lips at my amused expression. "It's a private joke. We matriculate a lot."

"That's kind of miserable," I offered a sympathetic half-smile at that. "I mean, repeating high school, over and over..."

"True, but the younger we start out in a new place, the longer we can stay there. Come on," he reached for my hand and gently pulled me along to a room at the top of the stairs. "Uh... yeah. This is my room," he gestured to the open space.

The outer walls were completely made of glass, and the floor was completely devoid of furniture, aside from several shelves full of books and vinyl records, and a single white futon in the center of it all.

"No bed?" I raised a brow.

"Uh, no. I don't... I don't sleep," he admitted sheepishly.

" _Ever_?"

"No. Not at all."

"Okay..." I giggled quietly at the thought of never sleeping again before moving to study the shelves on the far side of the room. "Boy, you have _so_ much music. What are you listening to?" I hummed curiously as I started up his record player.

"Uh, it's Debussy," he answered as _Claire de Lune_ softly began to play throughout the room. "I dunno..." he shrugged, seeming a bit self-conscious about his taste.

"Yeah," I smiled at him then because, " _Claire de Lune_ is great."

Harry's smile mirrored mine at that, and he hesitantly reached for my hand, that had been propped up on my hip. Goosebumps trailed up my arm from his touch, but not simply due to his icy body temperature. I genuinely enjoyed the way he touched me, even as rare as the occasion was.

I felt my cheeks flush when his other arm moved to the small of my back, gently guiding my body closer to his. We just swayed together for a moment, until he was taking a small step backward in order to spin me around his finger.

"What?" he hummed in amusement when I pursed my lips.

"I can't dance," I gave a self-deprecating laugh.

"Well, I could always _make_ you."

"I'm not scared of you."

"Well, you really shouldn't have said that," he smirked before bringing me around and pulling me up onto his back with ease.

Then he was pushing at the glass of one of his massive floor-to-ceiling windows, causing it to swing open like a door, and within mere seconds, he was climbing the trunk of the evergreen tree, that stood tall and mighty, just outside of his room.

"You better hold on tight, spider monkey," he told me, and I couldn't help but giggle, as he carried me up the length of the tree in no time. "Do you trust me?" he prompted from the very top of it.

"In theory..." I smiled and my hands subconsciously gripped onto his shoulders a little tighter.

"Then, close your eyes," Harry laughed, before he began to jump, from treetop to treetop.

"This isn't real," I shook my head in disbelief from the top of one of the tallest trees I'd ever seen in my life. The view was absolutely breathtaking. We could almost see the entirety of the Strait of Juan de Fuca from up here. "This kind of stuff just... _doesn't_ _exist_."

"It does in my world," he said.

When we returned to his home that evening, we sat together on the bench of his mother's piano, and as he played me a lithe original tune, I found myself thinking I could really get used to being with Harry like this.


	8. seven

"Arizona! Yo, what's happening?" Liam had greeted me when I pulled up to the diner after school one day. I just shrugged in response with a friendly smile as I hopped out of my truck. "So, you and Styles, huh? That's--I don't like it," he admitted with a half-smile, as though he didn't mean any offense by it, and I furrowed my brows at that. "I mean, I don't know... he just looks at you like you're something to eat."

 _If you only knew_ , I thought and I scoffed quietly, but chose to simply laugh it off before joining Mark inside at our usual table.

"Hey, sorry I'm late. Biology project," I excused myself, and although it wasn't entirely the truth, it wasn't entirely a lie either.

Harry had been my biology partner since my very first day at Forks High, and I had been spending just about every single day with him, so my excuse wasn't really all that far-fetched.

"I ordered you the spinach salad," Mark told me as he set his newspaper down. "I hope that's okay."

Cora approached the table as I nodded in response, and she set our plates in front of us, as if on cue.

"You should order one for yourself next time," I suggested with a teasing smile, "cut back on the steak."

"Hey, I'm as healthy as a horse," he replied as-a-matter-of-factly.

"Say, chief," Cora began with a mournful expression, "the boys wanna know... did you find anything down by Queets River today?" she asked in reference to a group of regulars who sat together at the table beside our own. They had also been good friends with Waylon, as Mark had.

"Yeah, we found a bare human footprint," Mark explained with a hint of reluctance. I could tell it was hard for him to discuss the details of the matter, but it was necessary, as it was his job to discover the truth behind whatever had taken place. "So, Kitsap County sheriff is gonna take over from here."

"Okay," Cora nodded in response, causing the rest of Waylon's friends to return to their meals with looks of sorrow etched into their features. "I just hope they catch him fast," she thought aloud before leaving us to eat.

Mark glanced behind me when the sound of Liam's voice could be heard outside, even through the windows.

"Looks like your friends are flaggin' you," he told me, but I had no real desire to go outside and be told how Harry apparently treated me like a choice cut of meat. "It's okay, if you wanna go join 'em," he assured me. "I'm just gonna turn in early anyway."

"Me, too," I shook my head.

"Lou," Mark looked up at me then, "it's Friday night. Go out." He glanced out the window once more and smirked before saying, "looks like the Payne boy's got a big smile for you."

"Yeah, he's a good buddy," I nodded in agreement, to which he sighed.

"What about any of these other yahoos in town?" he hummed curiously. "Anybody interest you?"

"Dad, are we gonna talk about boys?" I raised a knowing brow at that, earning a soft chuckle from him.

"Yeah, I guess not... I just feel like I leave you alone too much..." he confessed. "You should be around people."

I smiled at that, silently grateful to be reminded of how much he cared for me. "I don't really mind being alone," I shrugged honestly. "I guess, I'm kinda like my dad, in that way."

Mark's smile grew wider upon hearing that.

**\---**

"So, how's all the baseball stuff going?" I asked my mother over the phone, later that night in my bedroom.

 _"Oh, Dan's working so hard. You know, spring training,"_ she explained. I could hear the sound of a pitching machine shooting out a baseball before Dan must've smacked it across the training area with his bat. _"We're looking for a house to rent in case things become more permanent. You'd like Jacksonville, baby."_

"Yeah?" I hummed curiously, despite my indifference. "I'm really liking Forks," I admitted to her then.

 _"What?"_ she asked, somewhat in disbelief.

"Forks is growing on me," I answered.

 _"Could a_ guy _have anything to do with that?"_ I could hear her smirking through the phone.

"Well... yeah," I confessed with a quiet giggle.

 _"I knew it! Tell me everything,"_ she requested ecstatically. _"What is he? Jock? Indie? I bet he's smart. Is he smart?"_

I gasped, and nearly launched my cellphone across the room, when I glanced toward my bedroom window to find Harry, sitting casually at the foot of my bed.

"Uh..." I gaped before finding the words. "Mom, c-can I talk to you later?" I rushed out.

 _"Come on, we gotta talk boys!"_ she whined. _"Are you being safe?"_

I just shook my head at that and quickly ended the call before crawling down the length of my bed to sit before Harry.

"H-How did you get in here?" I asked him in amazement.

"The window," he answered with a smile.

"Do you do that a lot?" I raised a brow.

"Well... just the past couple of months..." he admitted sheepishly before saying, "I like watching you sleep. It's um... it's kind of fascinating to me."

I giggled quietly at that, as I wasn't quite sure what to do with that information, but he seemed to have more things to say, so I let him.

"Um..." he began quietly. "I always wanted to try one thing," he looked me in the eye, and when I showed no sign of hesitation, he slowly leaned in toward me. "Just stay very still," he requested, and when I found myself absentmindedly leaning in to meet him halfway, he told me, "don't move."

Finally, his cold lips practically melted into the warmth of my own, and it felt damn near _electric_.

All I could hear was the rapid beat of my heart, the quiet gasps that left his lips when I gave him another timid kiss, and then another, until a surge of confidence rushed through me and I felt compelled to swing one leg over and straddle Harry's thighs.

Much to my pleasant surprise, he let it happen, and he let me tangle my fingers in the curls at his nape and gently swipe the tip of my tongue along his lower lip as well.

He pulled away, just for a moment, in order to lift me by the hips and lay me back against my violet bedsheets.

Harry kissed me with passion, as though I was an oasis, and he was a man dying of heatstroke in the desert.

"Stop it," he breathed suddenly, and within milliseconds, he was leaning back against the wall at the far side of the room, panting quietly.

"I'm sorry," I gushed from where I was now sitting upright on the bed, watching him with a cautious gaze.

"I'm stronger than I thought..." he offered a giddy smile.

"Yeah," I returned the grin, "I-I wish I could say the same."

He looked to the floor then and told me, "I can't ever lose control with you."

I gulped at the thought of what it could possibly be like to make love to a vampire, before remembering the fact that I had no idea what it was like to make love to anyone at all.

"H-Hey, don't go..." I pleaded quietly, after he had been silent for a few moments.

His eyes met mine once more, and he smiled as he pushed himself away from the wall, and joined me on the mattress again.

We spent the entire rest of the evening talking for hours on end, until I eventually fell asleep, with Harry lying wide awake at my side.

I never would've thought that I could sleep so comfortably with someone else watching over me the that way he did that night.

**\---**

"Hey, got you another one," I greeted Mark with a fresh can of Rainier beer, as he sat at the dining table, polishing his double-barreled shotgun.

"Thanks," he chirped, seemingly in a good mood that day.

"I... I have a date with Harry Styles," I informed him after Harry had texted me that he was on his way to pick me up.

"He's a little old for you, isn't he?"

"No," I shook my head in response, despite the fact that Harry had actually been alive for _just over a century._ "He's a junior, I'm a junior... I thought you liked the Styles...?"

"I thought you didn't like any of the boys in town," he replied as he popped open his beer and took a drink.

"Harry doesn't live in town," I replied with a flush to my cheeks, "technically..."

Mark gave me a knowing look as he set his drink down.

"He's right outside," I said.

"He is?" he asked as he loaded two shells into his gun.

"Yeah, he wanted to meet you," I nodded somewhat nervously, "officially."

"Alright," Mark hummed, and I nearly jumped out of my skin at the sound of him suddenly snapping the shotgun's barrels in place. "Bring him in," he said before gently setting the gun down on the table.

"Could you be nice?" I requested hopefully. "He's important..."

Mark brought his hand up and made a circling motion over his head, as if to say he would behave like an angel, so I moved to the front door and let Harry inside.

"Chief Tomlinson," he nodded respectfully. "I wanted to formally introduce myself. I'm Harry Styles," he held a confident hand out for my father to shake.

"Hi, Harry," Mark nodded as well, and he seemed decently impressed when he reached to shake his hand. If Mark could feel how cold Harry was, he didn't mention it, and I was eternally grateful for that.

"Louis won't be out too late tonight," Harry assured him. "He's just going to play baseball with my family."

"Baseball?" Mark's brows raised at the idea.

"Yes, sir. That's the plan."

"Lou's gonna play baseball?" he chuckled at me in disbelief, causing my cheeks to flush once more. "Well, good luck with that," he teased me light-heartedly, and I just shook my head with a smile.

"I'll take good care of him. I promise," Harry nodded sincerely, and I felt my heart swelling at that as I moved to lead him outside.

"Hey, Lou," Mark called to me, to which I turned around, and encouraged Harry to continue on in order to start his car. "Still got that pepper spray?"

"Yeah, dad," I sighed quietly before I turned again to join Harry outside.

**\---**

"And since when do vampires like baseball?" I inquired curiously as Harry placed a blue and white baseball cap on my head.

"Well, it's the American pastime," he gave one reason before providing me with another, "and there's a thunderstorm coming. It's the only time we can play. You'll see why."

"Hey! Glad you're here," Anne beamed at the sight of Harry letting me out of his vehicle. She wrapped an arm around my shoulders as we walked over a large field of grass to meet the rest of their family in the center of it. "We need an umpire."

"She thinks we cheat," Emmett chuckled at that.

"I _know_ you cheat," Anne retorted as-a-matter-of-factly. "Call 'em as you see 'em, Lou," she told me when we reached the edge of the makeshift diamond field they had set up.

"Okay," I nodded, despite feeling as though I wasn't entirely qualified for any of this, and with that, Rosalie stepped up to bat.

"It's time," Alice smirked from the pitcher's mound, after a bolt of lightening struck down in the distance, releasing a crackle of thunder into the air.

Rosalie nodded, so Alice wound up the pitch, and her metal bat struck the ball almost immediately after it was thrown, emitting a sound damn near as thunderous as the real kind.

"Okay, now I see why you need the thunder," I gaped in astonishment as we watched the ball soar hundreds of feet into the forest of trees that surrounded us. "That's gotta be a home run, right?" I asked Anne, who shook her head as a response.

"Harry's very fast," she told me, while we watched Harry zip across the field just as Rosalie quickly made her way around the diamond.

Harry disappeared within the cover of the trees, and not a second later, the baseball was zooming back towards us. Anne caught it with ease.

"Come home, Rosalie!" Desmond encouraged from the outfield as she sprinted passed third, and when she was close enough, Rosalie dropped down onto her right thigh in order to slide home, only for Anne to touch her with the ball just before the tip of her cleat could touch the base.

"You're out," I called.

"Out!" Emmett echoed with a cheer, as he had been playing on the opposing side of his girlfriend. Rosalie glared at him then, to which he sighed. "Babe, come on. It's just a game."

"Nice kitty," Desmond consoled Rosalie when she stormed past me with the same glare she'd given Emmett.

Desmond was up to bat next, and with another crack of thunder, he sent the ball soaring back toward the trees.

Emmett and Harry sprinted toward the ball, as well as each other, before launching themselves several feet into the air to catch it, resulting in the two of them colliding with a groan.

"What are you doing?" Emmett grumbled at his brother once they landed amongst each other in the grass below. 

Harry just laughed and flipped him off before they scrambled back onto their feet to rejoin the game.

It felt really nice to see Harry behaving so comfortably within the company of his family. Even if they weren't all blood relatives, I could tell just how much each of them truly meant to one another.

"Stop!" Alice suddenly froze from where she had been winding up the next pitch, gaining the attention of everyone on the field.

I watched, with an anxious beat to my heart, as they all looked toward the forest in unison. Then, without even having to see whatever threat was approaching, they all rushed to the batter's side of the diamond.

"They were leaving and then they heard us," Alice explained as Harry quickly made his way up to me.

"Let's go," he said, with fear in his golden eyes, when he laced our fingers together and began to lead me toward our cars.

"It's too late," Desmond sighed, to which Harry immediately paused.

"Button up your jacket," he told me.

"Like that'll help," Rosalie muttered. "I can smell him from across the field."

As the rest of them turned toward the forest to face the threat, Harry looked down at me with a deeply apologetic expression. "I shouldn't have brought you here. I'm so sorry," he shook his head self-deprecatingly, but it did nothing to help me better understand the situation.

"What? I--"

"Just be quiet and stand behind me," he requested, and normally I would've told him off for trying to silence me, however, the circumstances seemed pretty dire, so I just nodded and kept my mouth shut.

Three figures joined us on the field that day; Two men and a woman, all barefoot, all pale, all with eyes of either pitch black or bright red.

I didn't need anyone else's help in discerning that the three of them were vampires as well, although I'd never seen one with eyes of red before. 

It was quite unnerving.

"I believe this belongs to you," the raven-haired man spoke as he held up the baseball Desmond had sent flying into the forest only moments ago. He tossed it forward, to which Desmond caught it with ease.

"Thank you," he replied in a calm tone.

"I am Zayn," the man informed us before gesturing to his company, "and this is Victoria... and James."

"I'm Desmond," he smiled in return. "This is my family," he gestured vaguely to the rest of us.

"Hello."

"I'm afraid your hunting activities have caused something of a mess for us," Desmond told them.

"Ours apologies," Zayn nodded in understanding. "We didn't realize the territory had been claimed."

"Yes, well, we maintain a permanent residence nearby."

"Really?" Zayn hummed in interest. "Well, we won't be a problem anymore. We were just passing through."

"The humans were tracking us, but we led them east," the red-haired woman, Victoria, spoke up then. "You should be safe," she assured us, but there was something in her smile that read quite the opposite of safe.

"Excellent," Des maintained his charming smile.

"So, could you use three more players?" Zayn asked curiously, to which we all looked to Desmond for his response.

Des gave a thoughtful sigh as he glanced around at each of his family members, before reluctantly deciding, "sure. Why not? A few of us were leaving. You could take their place. We'll bat first."

He tossed the ball toward Zayn, to which Victoria quickly snatched it out of the air. "I'm the one with the wicked curveball."

"Well, I think we can handle that," Jasper assured her from where he stood behind Emmett, with a matching smug grin.

"We shall see," Victoria shrugged.

Harry watched intently as everyone dispersed across the field once more, just as a gust of wind swept over the field and blew the baseball cap from my hair.

That's when the blonde stranger, James, deeply inhaled my scent until he wore a devilish smirk. "You brought a snack," he enthused, and when he began to charge me, Harry quickly shoved me behind himself.

In an instant, the Styles formed a protective wall, between myself and the three strangers.

Anne stood protectively before me then, as Harry quite literally hissed at the blonde man, and Desmond rushed to the front of the group in order to protect his wife and children.

"A human?" Zayn inquired curiously.

"The boy is with us," Desmond informed them sternly. "I think it best if you leave."

"I can see the game is over," Zayn replied to that seriously. "We'll go now," he slowly began to back away, as he seemed to be the only one, of the three strangers, with any sort of sensibility. " _James_ ," he called the blonde when the man stayed put.

Victoria hissed at us before immediately turning away, bringing James along with her. He wrapped a possessive arm around her shoulders and remained smug as he glared back at me, even as they made their leave.

"Get Louis out of here," Desmond urged Harry, who stared the three vampires down, until Des took him by the shoulders and encouraged him away from the field. " _Go_."

Harry turned to me then and he was quick to lift me by the hips and speed off toward his car.

He opened the passenger door, set me down upon the seat, and struggled a bit to pull my seat belt down and fasten it.

"Okay! I've got it! I've _got it_! I'm alright!" I huffed exasperatedly, to which his jaw set tight, and he slammed the door shut behind himself. He zipped around to the driver's side and quickly started the engine after slamming his door as well. "What, so, now he's _coming after me_?" I asked just before he stomped on the gas and peeled away.

"Listen to me!" he said seriously. "James is a _tracker_. The hunt is his obsession. I read his mind; My reaction on the field set him off. I just made this his most exciting game _ever_. He's never gonna stop!"

"What should we do?" I breathed and I watched his angry profile until he glanced over at me with furrowed brows.

"We have to kill him," he said simply. "Rip him apart and burn the pieces."

"Where are we going?" I asked him as we sped down the gravelly road we arrived upon.

"Away from Forks," he answered. "We'll get a ferry to Vancouver."

"I have to go home," I shook my head incredulously. " _Now_. You have to take me home."

"You can't go home," he shook his head as well. "He's just gonna trace your scent there. It's the first place he's gonna look."

"But my dad is there! We--"

"It doesn't matter!"

" _Yes, it does_!" I shouted exasperatedly. "He could get _killed_ because of us!"

Harry shook his head again, as if he couldn't stand the thought of anyone else getting hurt. "Just let me get you out of here first, alright?" he pleaded with me, and his eyes were rimmed with tears of frustration.

"It's my _dad_! We _have_ to go back!" I begged. "We'll figure out a way to lead the tracker away somehow, I dunno, but we have to do _something_!"


	9. eight

"Harry, I said leave me alone!" I shouted, after Harry had rushed me home, and I let myself inside.

Harry followed me up to the front door, however. "Louis, don't do this. _Please_ ," he begged just as Mark scrambled up onto his feet from where he was lying on the couch.

"It's over! Get out!" I slammed the door shut before I turned to jog up the staircase.

"Lou? What's going on?" Mark asked from the bottom of the steps.

"I just gotta get out of here," I shook my head as I let myself into my room. "I'm leaving. _Now_."

He was quick to ascend the stairs then, but I slammed the door shut before he could reach my room.

"Hey," I whispered to Harry, who had been waiting in my room just as we planned. 

We just needed an excuse to explain my spontaneous absence from Forks.

"Louis?" Mark knocked on the door as Harry quickly stuffed a few of my jackets into his backpack. "Louis, what's going on?"

"What am I gonna say to him?" I whispered. "I can't hurt him."

"You just have to," Harry frowned. "I'll be down at the truck," he assured me before climbing out of my bedroom window.

I stormed out of my room, past Mark, in order to grab the rest of my things from the bathroom.

"Did he hurt you?" he asked me sternly.

"No," I sighed as I tossed my various essentials into my backpack.

"He break up with you or something?" he guessed next.

"No, I broke up with him," I shook my head.

"I thought you liked him...?"

"Yeah, that's why I have to leave," I admitted the truth without including the much darker details. "I-I don't want this. I have to go home."

"Home?" he asked sadly. "Your mom's not even in Phoenix..."

"She'll come home. I'll call her from the road," I made up another excuse as I moved to grab my keys from my nightstand.

"You're not gonna drive home right now," he shook his head in disbelief. "You can sleep on it. If you still feel like going in the morning, I'll take you to the airport."

"No. I want to drive. It'll give me more time to think," I said on my way down the stairs. "I mean, if I get really tired, I'll pull into a motel. I promise."

"Look, Lou, I know I'm not that much fun to be around," I could hear him frowning as he followed me into the kitchen, and then he was standing before me, "but I can change that. We can do more stuff together."

I felt my heart aching between my lungs as I willed myself to snap at him. "Like _what_? Like watch baseball on the flat-screen? Eat at the diner every night? Steak and cobbler? Dad, that's _you_. That's not _me_ ," I avoided his gaze when I walked around him to reach the front door.

"Louis, come on, I just--I just got you back," he shook his head in disappointment, and I only wish he knew what I was really feeling in that moment.

I couldn't bring myself to turn around and look at him as I muttered, "yeah, and you know, if I don't get out now, then I'm just gonna be stuck here like mom," before I ripped open the door and slammed it shut behind me.

With tears in my eyes, I let myself into my truck, that I felt undeserving of, before I started the engine and immediately pulled away from the house.

A short distance down the street, Harry was suddenly latching onto the driver's side of the truck. "Your father's gonna forgive you," he assured me through the window I'd rolled down, but I couldn't quite bring myself to believe him. Harry opened the door then, silently encouraging me to scoot over. "Why don't you let me drive?" he asked rhetorically, and I moved to do so without question, as I felt that I was way too shaky to drive anyway.

"He won't," I shook my head in shame as I stared down at my hands. "You should've seen his face..." I sniffled. "I told him the same thing that my mom told him when she was leaving him."

"It's the only way he'd let you go," he replied sadly. "He's safe. The tracker's following us."

As if on cue, something could be heard landing on the roof of the truck. "Oh, God," I breathed.

"It's just Emmett," Harry shook his head in annoyance at his, somewhat careless, brother before the boy was jumping down to sit in the truck bed instead. "Alice is in the car behind us," he told me when a set of headlights approached us in the rearview mirror.

Then when we arrived at Harry's house in order to meet up with the rest of his family, I quickly backed up, and bumped into Harry's solid chest, when I was immediately met with Zayn; The black-haired, red-eyed vampire.

Harry hissed at him, only to be told to, "wait," by Desmond, who rounded the corner after Zayn. "He came to warn us about James."

"This isn't my fight and I've grown tired of his games," Zayn shook his head, "but he's got unparalleled senses. _Absolutely_ lethal. I've never seen anything like him in my 300 years... and the woman, Victoria? _Don't_ underestimate her."

**\---**

"I've had to fight our kind before," Jasper told Emmett as he led the way into their garage, which seemed to house almost enough cars for each member of their family. "They're not easy to kill."

"But not impossible," Emmett replied. "We'll tear 'em apart and burn the pieces."

"I don't relish the thought of killing another creature," Desmond thought aloud as they all prepared to take off, "even a _sadistic_ one like James."

"What if he kills one of us first?" Rosalie asked curiously.

"I'm gonna run Louis south," Harry shook his head at that, rather than allowing anyone to answer her heavy question. "Can you lead the tracker away from here?" he asked Desmond.

"No, Harry. James knows you would never leave Louis," he replied. "He'll follow you."

"I'll go with Louis," Alice volunteered with a gloomy expression. It felt strange to see her so unlike her usual, chipper self. I couldn't help but feel like all of this was solely my fault. "Jasper and I will drive him south. I'll keep him safe, Harry," she assured him.

"Can you keep your thoughts to yourself?" he grumbled at her with furrowed brows.

"Yes," Alice sighed, and he reluctantly let go of my hand, so she could lead me over to her car.

"Rosalie, Anne," Harry pulled his backpack from over his shoulder and handed both of them one of my jackets, "could you put these on, so the tracker will pick up Louis' scent?"

"Why?" Rosalie questioned as she simply let my jacket fall to the cement floor. "What is he to me?"

"Rosalie," Desmond shook his head at her as he knelt down to lift the jacket from the ground, "Louis is with Harry. He's part of this family now and we protect our family."

Rosalie's expression seemed to soften a bit then, and she reached out to accept the jacket from her father, before she followed Emmett over to his car.

Harry zipped over to Alice's car to join me, where I was sitting in the back seat with the window rolled down. "Oh, God," I quietly panicked, as Rosalie's question from before replayed in my head, and I suddenly thought of losing Harry in all of this. "If anything--What if--If anything happens, _I swear to God_ \--"

"Nothing's gonna happen," Harry shook his head at that as he leaned in, against his forearms, within the open window. "There's 7 of us and 2 of them... and when everything's done, I'm gonna come back and get you," he promised me.

"Yeah..." I swallowed anxiously, and I nodded along because I sincerely trusted him with my life, however, I couldn't bring myself to meet his gaze until he spoke again.

"Louis, you are my life, now."

**\---**

"Hey, mom," I called her from the road, while Jasper and Alice drove me all the way to Phoenix, just to ensure that I would be safe. "Um... you must've let your phone die or something... I'm not in Forks, but everything's okay, and I'll explain it later."

Meanwhile, Harry, and the rest of the family would be off, spreading my scent throughout the forests of Forks, in an earnest attempt to throw off my trackers.

I couldn't bare to think of losing Harry, and after his family had also shown just how far they were willing to go to protect me, I couldn't bare the thought of losing any of them, either.

**\---**

We had been sitting in silence within the shelter of a hotel in downtown Phoenix, awaiting any sort of update from Harry or any of the others, when Alice suddenly received a premonition.

"What is it?" Jasper asked when Alice's hand had abruptly squeezed his own. "What do you see?"

"The tracker," she answered fearfully. "He just changed course."

"Where will it take him, Alice?" he immediately reached for a pen and paper from the ottoman.

"Mirrors," she answered as he placed the pen in her hand and the paper on the table before her. "A room full of mirrors..."

Alice's golden gaze remained locked forward and unblinking, even as Jasper guided her hand toward the paper, and she fervently began to sketch out a rough image of what the place looked like.

"Harry said the visions weren't always certain..." I thought aloud.

"She sees the course people are on, while they're on it," Jasper explained as Alice continued to draw. "If they change their minds, the vision changes."

"Okay, so the course that the tracker's on now, is gonna lead him to a ballet studio?" I raised a brow, as I recognized the room Alice had drawn.

She immediately quit sketching and they both looked up at me then.

"You've been here?" she asked me.

"I took lessons as a kid..." I admitted sheepishly. "The school I went to had an arch, just like that," I pointed to the archway in her drawing.

"Was your school here, in Phoenix?" Jasper asked me then.

"Yeah," I answered, just as I felt my phone vibrating in my palm. "Harry, are you okay?" I rushed out when I immediately answered his call.

"We've lost the tracker," he told me, to which I felt a bit winded, by the astonishing accuracy of Alice's visions. "The woman's still in the area. Rosalie and Anne are going back to Forks to protect your father," he told me with a voice just above a whisper. I could tell he was disappointed in himself and I only wished that I could comfort him somehow. "I'm coming to get you. Then you and I are gonna go somewhere alone and the others will keep hunting. I'll do whatever it takes to make you safe again," he promised me.

**\---**

When my phone vibrated with another call a bit later on, I raised a brow when the caller ID read, " _home_ ," but I answered it immediately, nonetheless.

"Hey, mom... I'm glad you got my message. What are you doing home?" I asked curiously. 

"Louis? Louis! Louis, where are you?"

"Calm down," I gently consoled her. "Everything's fine," I lied.

"Louis? Louis!"

"I'll explain everything later--" I assured her, just before there was a loud clattering noise on the other end of the line. "Mom, are you there?"

"Forks High School doesn't protect its students' privacy very well," my brows furrowed, and a twinge of anxiety ran up the length of my spine, at the chilling sound of James' voice coming through the receiver.

I glanced around at the empty suite in a bit of a panic, as Jasper and Alice had left the room, in order to find us all something to eat.

"It was just too easy for Victoria to find your previous address. It's a nice house you have here..." he told me, and I was absolutely fuming by then as well, but I stayed quiet and attentive. "I was prepared to wait for you, but then mom came home, after she received a very worried call from your dad, and it all worked out quite well."

"Don't touch her!" I shouted. "Don't--" 

"You can still save her... but you're gonna have to get away from your friends. Can you handle that?"

"Where should I meet you?" I asked sternly, as I didn't care what it took, I wasn't going to let him harm my mother.

"How about your old ballet studio?" he hummed in amusement, and I rolled my eyes when he added, "and I'll know if you bring anyone along. Poor mommy would pay the price for that mistake."

With that, the line went dead, and I rushed out of the suite without another word.

I'd never given much thought to how I would die, but dying in the place of someone I love seemed like a good way to go.

I couldn't bring myself to regret the decisions that brought me face-to-face with death.

They had also brought me to Harry.


	10. nine

I took a long, shaky breath, after stepping out of the taxi I had taken to my old ballet studio, and reached into my pocket for the canister of pepper spray that Mark had given me.

The sky was black and dotted with stars, and the lights on the inside of the studio were all off, and I quickly tried to prepare myself for what was to come.

I, a 17-year-old mortal human, was really about to face off against a sadistic, predacious, and _absolutely lethal_ vampire, with nothing to aid me, but my own two fists and a canister of pepper spray.

Nevertheless, I charged forward, past the doors--that had, of course, been unlocked by James, somehow--to come across the absolutely empty studio.

The only source of light, came from the moon, shining through the windows above the mirrored walls. However, the darkness didn't matter to me then because I could hear my mother's voice calling out to me.

"Louis? Louis! Louis, where are you?"

"Mom!" I rushed toward the closet at the far side of the room, as her voice seemed to be coming from within.

"There you are!" she hummed when I ripped open the doors, only to find that she wasn't really there at all.

There was a television on the floor, playing one of my family's old tapes; My father had been filming me, during my first recital, before I nervously ran away from the rest of the class and hid inside this very closet. I was about seven years old at the time.

 _"What are you doing in here?"_ she had asked me, after kneeling down before me.

 _"Everyone makes fun of me,"_ I told her with a pout, which caused her to frown.

 _"Come on,"_ she had hugged me so tight that day, _"you're a wonderful dancer."_

_"Mom, I suck..."_

When a deep rumble of laughter could be heard from just behind me, I was quick to turn on my heel, and finally came face-to-face with the blonde vampire from the baseball field once again.

"That's my favorite part," he told me with a smirk. "You were a stubborn child, weren't you?"

"She's not even here," I thought aloud and within an instant, James' forearm was to my throat, holding me against the wall with a bruising force.

"Sorry," he whispered in my ear, causing me to shudder in disgust, "but you really made it too easy. So, to make things more entertaining, I'm gonna make a little film of our time together."

He backed away from me then, to retrieve a videocamera from within his coat; The same camera that my dad had filmed me with, all those years ago.

"I borrowed this from your house," he told me as he flipped open the lens, and he aimed the camera up at my face. "I hope you don't mind, and..." he began to record me with it, "action! This'll break Harry's little heart."

"Harry--" I choked out, before angrily surging forward to shove him away from me, "Harry has nothing to do with this!"

James shoved me back against the wall in return, but kept a calm and steady tone of voice, which did nothing but anger me further, "but he does," he said. "Oh, his rage will make for more interesting sport than his _feeble_ attempt to protect you..." he chuckled quietly before backing away from me again, "and let's continue."

I used the only defense I had left against him, and I quickly brought my fist up to spray him in the eyes with the mace I'd tucked up my sleeve, before making a run for it.

Not-so-surprisingly, James was standing before me, and blocking my way out, within milliseconds, simultaneously making me pause in my tracks. He grabbed me by the throat then and practically threw me across the room.

I landed against the hardwood floor, and slid a good distance, before my head and spine roughly collided with the sharp edges of one of the stone pillars in the wall.

"Beautiful," he commented as I tried to push myself back up onto my feet, but when I felt a sudden warmth among the pain at the back of my head, I reached up to find that I was bleeding _pretty fucking badly_. 

"Very visually dynamic. I chose my stage well," he knelt before me and seized my bloody hand. "It's too bad he didn't have the strength to turn you," he growled ravenously as he stared down at my blood, and I was quick to retract my limb from his vice-like grip. "Instead, he kept you this _fragile_ little human. It's cruel, really."

I glared up at him as he stood, knowing fully well that nothing I said or did would change anything, just before he lifted his foot and stomped down against my calf, snapping the bone like a tree branch.

I screamed in agony, while he just laughed maniacally and continued to record me, as though this was some sort of sick, twisted snuff film.

"Tell Harry how much it hurts," he breathed. "Tell him to avenge you! _Tell him_!"

"No, Harry, don't!!!" I shouted through the searing pain of my broken limb, then with a sudden gust of wind, something had knocked James off of his feet and into the wall at the far end of the studio.

I gasped when I turned to find Harry, seething at the center of the room. He took a deep breath before he slowly turned toward me. 

It may have still been dark within the studio, but I could see, clear as day, that his once honey gold irises had become onyx black again. However, I could see the reluctance within them as well, when he seemed to become somewhat entranced by, both the smell and the sight of, my blood.

Then James rushed to hold him against one of the mirrored walls he stood before. "You're alone," the blonde hummed in thought, "'cause you're faster than the others."

I cried even harder when he slammed Harry's head back against the mirror, shattering the glass with the force of his skull, and causing Harry to groan from the pain. 

"But not stronger."

"I'm strong enough to kill _you_ ," Harry muttered in response, before he shoved James away from him and brought a sneaker up to kick him square in the chest, sending him flying back into the mirror behind him.

Harry was at my side, with tears in his eyes, in the next second.

"I'm sorry," he quietly cried while he scooped one arm under my knees and the other around my shoulders. He attempted to run, only for James to grab him by the ankle, causing him to fall forward and drop me back onto the floor in the process.

I landed among the shards of the mirror they'd shattered and I was quick to pull a piece from my thigh from where it had pierced through the denim of my jeans and caused me to bleed even more.

Meanwhile, after having thrown Harry across the room yet again, James quickly took my hand, pushed the sleeve of my jacket up to my elbow, and kept his gaze locked on Harry as he bore his teeth and sunk them into the flesh of my wrist.

Harry was on him almost immediately, with a rage in him that I'd never seen before, as I helplessly writhed in misery against the hardwood floor. 

Harry was right; The vampire's venom felt _excruciating_ , as it slowly seeped deeper into my veins, and it burned within my bloodstream with an intensity that I could only imagine to be damn near _acidic_.

I subconsciously began to hyperventilate, when I watched Harry suddenly take a massive bite out of the side of James' neck, before carelessly spitting a large chunk of his flesh onto the floor.

Then Desmond and the others were arriving at the scene, just in time to keep him from going any further.

"Louis? Louis, it's okay," Alice calmly assured me, after she had immediately knelt down beside me. 

As she quickly checked me over, to fully assess the extent of the damage James had dealt me, the others rushed toward Harry.

Desmond took his son by the shoulders and looked Harry dead in his black eyes with his own gold ones. "Son," he calmly consoled him, "enough. Remember who you are. Louis _needs you_."

As I lay silent, both from the shock and from the amount of blood loss I was experiencing, Alice ran her hands down the length of both of my legs, to check for any broken bones, before she realized that my thigh had been bleeding profusely.

"Oh, God," she breathed sadly, and she couldn't seem to help herself, as she brought her hand up toward her face in order to inhale the scent of my blood. "Desmond?" she immediately called for him. "The blood!"

"Your brothers will take care of him," I heard Desmond assuring Harry, just before Emmett and Jasper ripped James' body away from Harry's grip.

"I got him," Emmett told Jasper as he easily dragged the weakened vampire across the floor by his biceps. "Start the fire. Get the floorboards."

Then, Jasper began to tear up the wooden planks from the floor and carelessly toss them over his shoulder, whilst Desmond switched places with Alice in order to assist me.

I gaped, in both horror and astonishment, as I watched her speed over to James and snap his head clean off of his shoulders _with her bare hands_.

"His femoral artery has been severed," Desmond thought aloud as he carefully raised my injured leg from the floor. "He's losing too much blood."

"N-No--!" I struggled to speak through my gritted teeth. "M-My hand--It's _burning_!!!"

"It's the venom," Harry said as he fell to his knees at his father's side, and Alice was quick to join us once more.

"You're gonna have to make a choice," Desmond rushed out upon his sudden realization that I had been bitten, "to prevent the change from happening."

" _No_ ," Harry refused with his jaw set tight.

"It's gonna happen, Harry," Alice shook her head at her brother. "I've seen it," she said, in reference to her visions.

"It doesn't have to be that way," he replied.

"He's still hemorrhaging," Desmond shook his head as well, before he looked toward his daughter. "Alice, make me a tourniquet; Your belt," he glanced down at the faux-leather around her waist.

"Desmond..." Harry's eyes were still jet black, but now alight with the glow of the fire his brothers had started, as he watched me writhe and whimper, "what's my other option?"

"Tie it above my hands," Des told Alice once she'd successfully removed her belt, and she quickly did as she was told. I gasped at the sudden feeling of the belt tightening around the very top of my thigh, before Des told her to, "go," and Alice was speeding off to help her brothers destroy what was left of James' body.

" _Desmond_ ," Harry growled desperately.

"Try to suck the venom out," Desmond finally answered, much to Harry's dismay.

"You know I won't be able to stop," he shook his head at that.

"Then, _find the will_ to stop," Desmond told him, "but _choose_! He only has minutes left."

Tears fell from Harry's eyes when he looked down at me then. "I'm gonna make it go away, Louis..." he promised me, just above a whisper. "I'm gonna make it go away."

Then, like ice water to a raging flame, Harry reluctantly bore his fangs and sank them into the deep bite mark James had left in my wrist. He closed his eyes as he tried to concentrate on draining the venom from my body and soothing the tantalizing ache I felt throughout its entirety.

After a moment, the burning sensation had been extinguished, and my cries of pain had subsided into heavy, exhausted breaths. 

However, I began to feel light-headed when Harry seemed to struggle within himself to tear himself away from the taste of my blood.

"Harry, _stop_ ," Desmond told him, from where he had still been holding the makeshift tourniquet tight around my thigh. "His blood is clean. You're _killing him_ ," he said, as my eyelids grew heavier and I began to see stars. " _Harry_... stop," Desmond urged him to be strong, to let go. "Find the will," he said.

I only wished I had the strength in that moment to help him find it.

Just before I could slip out of consciousness, I saw my entire life playing out before me, like a movie set on fast forward.

Then immediately after, my bleeding head fell to the floor, and everything around me was submerged in darkness.


	11. epilogue

Death is peaceful, easy.

Life is harder.

**\---**

"Louis? Baby?" I heard my mother's voice before I blinked my eyes open to find her sitting at my side. "Louis..." she smiled when I met her gaze.

"Mom..." I wheezed, and upon glancing down to find that I was laying beneath the sheets of a hospital bed, I was instantaneously reminded of James and the ballet studio.

"Hey," she breathed a sigh of relief upon hearing me speak.

"Wh-Where is he?" I swallowed dryly. "Where's... where's Harry?"

"He's asleep," she told me before she glanced over her shoulder, and I followed her line of sight over to the side of the room, where Harry was sitting in one of the visitor's chairs with his arms crossed over his chest beneath his hanging head.

I wasn't sure when I woke up exactly, but it must've been pretty late.

His eyes were closed beneath the adorable furrow of his brows, and I knew he was only pretending to be asleep to save face in front of my mom, but I silently admired the way he would most likely appear if he ever actually slept.

"He never leaves," she smiled at him thoughtfully, "and your dad is down in the cafeteria."

"What happened?" I asked her then, as I wasn't sure what exactly she had been told, but I knew it would be far from the truth.

"Well, you fell and you broke your leg," she said softly. "You lost a lot of blood... you don't remember any of this, do you?"

I furrowed my brows to feign confusion before shaking my head as well.

"Harry came down with his dad to try and convince you to come back to Forks," she explained. "So, you went over to their hotel. You tripped, and you fell down 2 flights of stairs... then you went through a _window_ ," she shook her head in horror.

"Yeah, that sounds like me..." I sighed quietly, which caused her to giggle light-heartedly, so I took that as a silent victory.

I was incredibly grateful for Harry and his family, for coming up with an excuse for my parents to believe. However, I also dreaded the fact that I would have to face my dad at any moment.

"Oh, honey, I'm so sorry," my mom cooed as she reached up to brush my messy fringe out of my eyes. Then when her phone began to vibrate, she looked at the screen and told me, "it's Dan... he's so worried about you."

Her thumbs moved to type out a reply, and I raised a brow at that because, "you're texting...?"

"Finally," she hummed after she pressed send and focused all of her attention back on me. "I told him to stay down in Florida. Now, honey, you are gonna love Jacksonville. It's sunny every day, and we found the cutest little house, and you've got your own bathroom--"

"Mom, I still want to live in Forks..." I replied timidly.

"What?"

"I want to live in Forks," I repeated with a little more confidence.

"Well, okay... we'll--we'll talk about it," she nodded.

"Would you mind getting dad...?" I requested hesitantly. "I have to talk to him... apologize," I stared down at my hands and felt ashamed of the way I had treated him.

"Okay, baby," she offered a comforting half-smile. "I'll go get him," she leaned in to kiss my forehead before adding, "and I'll go get a nurse, okay?"

"Okay," I nodded gratefully and once the door clicked shut behind her, I felt tears well up in my eyes as I turned to look over at Harry, who was no longer pretending to be asleep. "What happened?" I swallowed nervously. "Wh-Where's James?"

He stood from the chair and slowly made his way over to me. "We took care of him..." he assured me as he took my mother's seat beside the bed, "and the woman, Victoria, she ran off..."

"I'm alive... because of _you_ ," I told him then, and I was grateful that he was unable to read my thoughts, for I wasn't quite sure how he would react if could he hear the way my conscience yearned for me to confess my love for him.

"No," he shook his head with a sad furrow to his brows, "you're in here because of me."

My tears finally fell, and my lips formed a frown, upon hearing him say that.

"The worst part of it was... I thought I wasn't gonna be able to stop..."

"Y-You _did_ stop--" I tried.

"Louis, you've got to go to Jacksonville," he said, "so I can't hurt you anymore."

"Wh-What?" I narrowed my eyes at him incredulously. "A-Are you--? _No_..." I refused. "No! How--I don't even know what you're--What are you talking about? You want me to go away? No! I _can't_! I can't just _leave_ _you_ , I--"

"I know," he quietly consoled me, and he closed his eyes for a moment, seeming as though he was close to giving up.

"We can't be apart," I shook my head as I began to panic. "You can't leave me."

Several years worth of abandonment issues, at the hands of both my parents and several questionable friends of my past, came weighing down upon my chest like an anvil.

Every person I had ever known had eventually left me.

I wouldn't possibly be able to stand it if Harry left me, too.

He took my hand in his, being mindful of the bandages around my wrist, and laced his icy fingers with mine.

"I'm here," he held on tight, and I exhaled a shaky breath.

"O-Okay, just--just don't--you just can't say stuff like that to me... _ever_ ," I tried my best to quit crying, but I couldn't seem to help it.

Harry didn't seem to mind it though, as he stood from his seat and leaned down in order to press a lingering kiss to my forehead. 

"Where else am I gonna go?" he asked me then, and with the way his hand felt strong and protective within my own, I truly believed that he would stay.

**\---**

On the evening of Forks High's prom, when I came hobbling down the steps of my father's house dressed in a crisp blue suit, a single black dress shoe, and a fracture boot, I pursed my lips when I found Mark and Harry waiting at the bottom of the staircase for me.

"Niall lent me the suit," I explained when they both just stood there gaping, "and the cast is..." I shrugged as I gave a curt laugh to show my indifference.

"You're perfect..." Harry looked up at me with a sparkle in his golden eyes, causing my cheeks to flush pink, while Mark just glanced over him in silence. "I'll take care of him, Chief Tomlinson."

"Uh huh," Mark took a sip of his beer. "I've heard that before."

Harry just chuckled at that and awkwardly reached up to adjust the collar of his own dress shirt before he moved to open the front door.

"Uh, Louis?" Mark asked me before I could follow Harry outside. He pulled another canister of mace from his back pocket and handed it to me. "I grabbed you a new can of pepper spray," he told me.

"Dad..." I sighed as I glanced down at the little green can.

"And, well... you look lovely," he offered me a proud smile that I couldn't help but mirror.

"Thanks. See you," I glanced down at my broken leg before putting it to use and meeting Harry outside.

**\---**

"Hey, I'll be right back," Harry told me once we arrived at the venue.

I nodded and he helped me sit down on a bench near the entrance before he made his temporary leave.

"Louis."

I heard a familiar voice calling my name from behind me, and I was quick to turn around and spot, "Jacob," standing there with a friendly smile. "Hey," I hummed happily as he joined me near the bench.

"Nice," he complimented as he gestured vaguely to all of me.

"You, too," I nodded sincerely as I gave him a quick once over. 

He wore his long, dark hair down over his shoulders and he was dressed in a suit. However, he was casually missing a blazer, his shirt wasn't tucked into his slacks, and his sleeves were rolled up to his elbows. 

"Are you crashing the prom or something? Did you come with a date?"

"No, uh..." he took a deep breath before sighing on the exhale. "My dad paid me to come talk to you," he confessed with a soft chuckle as he moved to sit beside me on the bench, "20 bucks."

"Let's hear it," I shrugged at that despite the nervous feeling that was creeping up my spine.

"Just--don't get mad... okay?" he requested, and I nodded, so he continued. "He wants you to break up with your boyfriend..." Jacob pursed his lips awkwardly as I did the same. "He said, uh... quote, _we'll be watching you._ "

My brows furrowed at that, causing Jacob to laugh, so I laughed as well. "Okay, well, tell him _thanks_...?" I shook my head in confusion before adding, "and to _pay up_."

"Okay," he hummed in amusement and when I moved to stand, he gently reached out and said, "oh, let me help you--"

"Jacob," Harry suddenly joined my side, causing any trace of a smile to fall from Jacob's features. "I'll take it from here," he said.

Jacob's jaw set, and he seemed to glare up at Harry for a moment, before he glanced down at me and said, "guess I'll see you around, Lou."

He turned to leave the venue then, so Harry and I moved to do the opposite, following our peers around the building and into the garden behind it.

"I leave you alone for two minutes and the wolves descend," Harry smirked as he placed a possessive hand at the small of my back.

I just shook my head with a laugh at that before the sudden flash of a camera distracted me from whatever we'd been talking about. 

"I can't believe you're making me do this," I grumbled beneath my breath as we were apparently the next in line to be photographed.

"Just smile," Harry playfully squeezed my palm after lacing our fingers together, and after another quick flash, we were walking hand in hand toward the back entrance of the building.

When we reached the steps, I was grateful for Harry's helping hands that lifted me by the hips in order to help me up the small flight of stairs. However, when we moved deeper into the building, among the pulsing music and the sea of moving bodies on the dance floor, I took a deep breath to try and conceal my nerves.

"Wow, you are _really_ trying to kill me," I joked.

"Prom is an important right of passage," he teased me before adding, "I didn't want you missing it."

**\---**

"You wanna go?" Harry asked me after we had spent most of the night within the company of his siblings and my friends.

I had a lot more fun than I had initially expected I would, but even so, the introvert inside of me was screaming to be let out, and I nodded in response to Harry's question.

"Alright! Slowin' it down..." the DJ announced over the speakers as we slipped out of the venue through the back.

Whatever upbeat pop song had been playing before, was now slowly fading into a gentle, lithe tune.

"Shall we?" Harry paused when we joined one another beneath the ethereal cover of a twinkling gazebo in the center of the garden.

"You're serious...?" I raised a brow at that, silently wondering if he remembered how horribly I danced the first time around in his bedroom, just a few weeks back.

"Oh, why not?" Harry smiled down at me. 

When I absentmindedly glanced down at the boot around my foot, he simply wrapped an arm around my waist and lifted me, so that I could stand upon the toes of his expensive-looking dress shoes.

I couldn't help the way my lips stretched into a beaming smile when I looked into his eyes and he began to take slow, gentle steps.

"See? You're dancing," he cooed proudly.

"At prom..." I bounced my brows in surprise, and as the other couples moved to find warmth and shelter from to cool night air, I couldn't help but curiously ask, "Harry, why did you save me? If you had just let the venom spread... I could be like you by now..."

"You don't know what you're saying," he shook his head at that, but continued to sway with me in slow circles. "You don't want this."

"I want _you_ ," I replied. " _Always_."

"I'm not gonna _end your life_ for you..." he spoke softly, yet sternly.

"I'm dying already..." I shrugged it off. "Every second, I get closer... _older_..."

"That's the way it's supposed to be," Harry told me.

"Alice said that she saw me like you," I tried. "I heard her."

Harry shook his head once again. "Her visions change."

"Yeah. Based on what people decide," I nodded in agreement with his statement. "I've decided..."

"So, _that's_ what you dream about?" his brows furrowed in confusion. "Becoming a _monster_?"

I frowned deeply, just as I had any other time I heard him refer to himself as a monster.

"I dream about _being with you_..." I corrected him. " _Forever_."

"Forever?" Harry asked me, as though he wanted me to be sure, before he slipped his fingers into my hair and gently tilted my head back, "and you're ready...? _Right now_?"

I swallowed thickly in anticipation and let my eyes flutter shut when he leaned in closer.

" _Yes_ ," I was absolutely, positively, _sure of it_.

However, Harry clearly still disagreed, as he pressed gentle kisses along the side of my neck instead.

"Is it not enough just to have a long and happy life with me?" he asked me then, with a smug look on his face at the sight of my disappointed expression.

"Yeah..." I sighed quietly in response, "for now..."

Harry seemed to accept that answer, and we silently sealed our deal with a much needed kiss, and an unspoken amount of love for one another that I was certain I would never feel for anyone else.

**\---**

No one will surrender tonight, but I won't give in.

I know what I want.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thus, Twilight ✨ has come to an end.
> 
> Thank you for reading. I sincerely hope you enjoyed!
> 
> If you did, the sequel, New Moon, is now available to read in my works!
> 
> 🌙


End file.
